Joe Biden, an ethical indictment of his family’s influence peddling scheme

The media may choose to focus purely on the legal ramifications of potential influence peddling, but the ethical case is much more damning at this point, especially in regards to Biden’s dealings with Ukraine and Burisma. 

We must begin by acknowledging that whether something is legal or ethical are actually two different questions.  The law is humanity’s attempt to codify ethics into an objective formal system and we can expect substantial overlap between both spheres, but simply because something is legal, does not automatically mean it’s ethical, or vice versa.  An honest, upright man may break the law and remain both honest and upright.  Likewise, an unethical man may hide behind the letter of the law for their own nefarious purposes.  This distinction is not always relevant in our day to day lives, but it takes on new meaning when evaluating the behavior of a politician in the context of a Democrat-friendly media environment.  The law, as ever, is a complicated, at times slow moving beast with (usually) strict standards of evidence and, when it comes to politicians in particular, no shortage of legal loopholes to hide unethical behavior, from insider trading that would subject an ordinary citizen to prosecution to the acceptance of “gifts” and other donations that would likely do the same.  It should be no surprise that high profile politicians engaged in clearly unethical behavior are rarely prosecuted and, even when they are, the cases frequently end in acquittal or are overturned as we have seen with both Republican Governor Bob McDonnell in Virginia and Democrat Senator Bob Menendez in New Jersey, who has recently been indicted for a second time.  As a result, we should all be wary when either the media, the politician in question, or both mount a strictly legal defense of their actions, hiding behind phrases such as “no direct evidence” or “yet to prove that _______ profited personally.”  These statements can be strictly true and it might also remain true that the person in question is never formally charged with a crime, but that doesn’t necessarily prevent us from declaring the behavior in question unethical or even corrupt, and the person engaging in the behavior unfit for office.  This principle is made plain in evaluating the conduct of President Joe Biden and his family during his time as Vice President under Barack Obama.  Stephen Collinson, writing for CNN yesterday morning, provides a representative sample of the common defense.  The “GOP, which has yet to show any evidence that Biden is guilty of bribery, treason or high crimes and other misdemeanors, is using impeachment to try to damage the president ahead of the election and to mitigate the historic stain of Trump’s double impeachments and quadruple criminal indictments. Still, the process could exacerbate public skepticism over Hunter Biden’s alleged influence peddling, which has created an impression of a conflict of interest, even if the GOP is yet to prove that the president profited personally from the transactions.”

Mr. Collinson is not entirely wrong in this analysis and what he has written is factually correct.  He is, however, choosing to focus purely on the legal ramifications when the ethical case, at least in my view, is much more damning at this point, especially in regards to their dealings with Ukraine and Burisma.  This ethical case begins with the knowledge that Hunter Biden was only hired as a Burisma board member because he was the Vice President’s son.  At the time, Hunter had no experience whatsoever in the energy sector, none in the region, and none serving on the boards of large companies.  He did, however, have a connection to the office of his father, a connection that all parties were fully aware of, and one that remains the sole reason for his being retained as a board member and lawyer.  This is clear from the recent testimony of Hunter’s business partner, Devon Archer, who also worked with Burisma.  He described the desire of their employer this way, “Well, I think there was ‑‑ there are particular, you know, objectives that Burisma was trying to accomplish. And a lot of it’s about opening doors, you know, globally in D.C.  And I think that, you know, that was the, you know ‑‑ and then obviously having those doors opened, you know, sent the right signals, you know, for Burisma to, you know, carry on its business and be successful.”  In the same testimony, he described then Vice President Biden as the “brand” of the company, suggesting that the situation was not unique to Burisma.  Likewise, we know that President Biden himself was aware of Hunter’s role on the Burisma board and actively participated in meetings with both Burisma and other clients.  This is clear from both Mr. Archer’s testimony and emails between the VP’s office and Hunter’s associates. Mr. Archer claimed the Vice President attended dinner in Washington, DC in April 2015 with a Burisma board advisor, Vadym Pozherskiy, and that Hunter Biden arranged a phone call with his father, Mr. Pozherskiy, and the owner of Burisma, Nikolai Zlochevsky in December 2015.  Also in December 2015, Hunter’s business partner, Eric Schwerin, sent quotes to the Vice President’s communications director, Kate Bedingfield, about Hunter’s role on the Burisma board, quotes that were provided by and coordinated with Burisma itself.  At 2.30 PM, Ms. Bedingfield replied, “VP signed off on this,” suggesting the office was actively colluding with Burisma.  It is also important to note that the arrangement was so unusual, officials in the State Department voiced concerns about Hunter’s role on the Burisma Board in real time.  George Kent, Acting Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Kyiv wrote in 2016,  “Furthermore, the presence of Hunter Biden on the Burisma board was very awkward for all U.S. officials pushing an anticorruption agenda in Ukraine.”  Amos Hochstein, another State Department official, raised similar concerns, meaning awareness of the conflict of interest was shared by both the players involved and the government itself.

This is the context through which all subsequent events need to be evaluated and crucially for our purposes, it is important to note that the arrangement is unethical in and of itself, regardless of whether the conflict of interest was ultimately acted upon.  Integrity Star, a publication of the University of Central Florida, provides a representative definition, “A conflict of interest occurs when an individual’s personal interests – family, friendships, financial, or social factors – could compromise his or her judgment, decisions, or actions in the workplace. Government agencies take conflicts of interest so seriously that they are regulated.”  The operative word is “could” compromise, not has compromised.  The same way a judge recuses him or herself prior to making a decision in a case that may represent a conflict of interest, politicians, business people, and people in general are responsible for avoiding the conflict in the first place and entering into an arrangement such as Hunter, President Joe Biden, and Burisma, where the sole purpose was to exploit the conflict of interest is unethical whether or not it was actually exploited.  Further, a conflict of interest does not require a direct payment to all parties.  A family member being paid produces the same unethical result.  The University of Central Florida continues, “When it comes to conflicts of interest, appearance is as important as reality. This is why disclosing conflicts of interest is important. Disclosure is typically a more formal and documented process that most organizations have adopted in policy to address conflicts of interest…it’s important to disclose both potentially perceived and actual conflicts of interest to allow others to evaluate the matter and make the decision, rather than keep it to oneself and then create an ethical or legal situation. The individual cannot make the determination as to whether it is a conflict or not because he or she does not have an independent or objective point of view.”  In this case, not only did President Joe Biden fail to disclose it, he lied about any knowledge of Hunter’s business dealings dozens of times, concealing it rather than offering transparency.  It is also worth noting that the federal government regulates conflicts of interest, except those regulations do not apply to either the President or the Vice President. If Biden were Secretary of State, his behavior would clearly have run afoul of the applicable standards. In addition, even if we assume Vice President Biden had no intention of acting on the conflict or actually executing the sale of influence, the ethical case doesn’t improve:  In that case, he is, as a Democrat recently putting it, allowing his son to sell the “illusion of access” which is another word for fraud, as in his son was selling a product with his permission that didn’t exist and the goal was to profit by trading on the elder Biden’s office either way.

Nor are subsequent events in the fall of 2015 and winter of 2016 any less damning.  During this period, Vice President Joe Biden was charged with carrying out Ukraine policy by his boss, President Barack Obama.  This was public knowledge in the media as the Vice President was referred to the “front-man” or “point-man” in the region, a phraseology that continues to this day.  The Woodrow Wilson Center noted as recently as early 2021, “As vice president of the United States under President Barack Obama, Biden became the point person on Ukraine. Biden traveled to Ukraine on six occasions, more than any previous American president or vice president. During his first trip, Biden stated that Ukraine had come a long way since the 2004 Orange Revolution and that, while there was still work to be done, the United States would stand by Ukraine as it continued on its path to democracy.”  We also know that Ukrainian Prosecutor General Victor Shokin was actively investigating Burisma while Hunter Biden was on the board and his father was “point-man” in the country.  As Mr. Archer described it, “He was a threat. He ended up seizing assets of [Burisma owner] Nikolai [Zlochevsky] — a house, some cars, a couple properties. And Nikolai actually never went back to Ukraine after Shokin seized all of his assets.”  The seizure of these assets was reported in the Kyiv Post, dated February 2, 2016.   Mr. Shokin was then fired in March, an event the Vice President has publicly bragged about precipitating.  The New York Times covered the event on March 29, “Bowing to pressure from international donors, the Ukrainian Parliament voted on Tuesday to remove a prosecutor general who had clung to power for months despite visible signs of corruption.  But in a be-careful-what-you-wish-for moment, veteran observers of Ukrainian politics said that the prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, had played an important role in balancing competing political interests, helping maintain stability during a treacherous era in the divided country’s history.”  The coverage also mentioned the Vice President in particular, “As the problems festered, Kiev drew increasingly sharp criticism from Western diplomats and leaders. In a visit in December, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said corruption was eating Ukraine ‘like a cancer.’”  President Biden himself described the firing as a classic quid pro quo a couple of years later.  “I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars’… I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.’”

Thus, the “threat” to Burisma was removed at the insistence of Vice President Biden while his son Hunter was getting paid by Burisma.  President Biden’s defenders argue that firing Mr. Shokin was an objective of both the US and Europe at the time, but it doesn’t matter from an ethical perspective.  There is no way to separate out the potential conflict of interest in this scenario – after the arrangement was entered into with all parties aware and concerns were raised by officials, Vice President Biden continued of his own accord to enact the preferred policy of his son’s employer and legal client.  Declaring it unethical and calling it corrupt doesn’t require anything further, but there is more to the case.  Contrary to what we have been told over the past several years, we have learned in recent weeks that the firing of Mr. Shokin was not a goal of either US or European policy until he became a target of the Vice President’s sometime in late November or early December 2015.  By March 2016, The New York Times was confidently declaring that “The United States and other Western nations had for months called for the ousting of Mr. Shokin, who was widely criticized for turning a blind eye to corrupt practices and for defending the interests of a venal and entrenched elite. He was one of several political figures in Kiev whom reformers and Western diplomats saw as a worrying indicator of a return to past corrupt practices, two years after a revolution that was supposed to put a stop to self-dealing by those in power,” but the critical question is how they came to that belief.  Prior to the Vice President’s December 2015 visit to Ukraine, both the US and our European allies were praising Mr. Shokin.  A progress report from the European Union as late as December 18 noted that Ukraine had achieved “noteworthy” progress in “preventing and fighting corruption” and was eligible for visa-free travel in the region as a result.  The reported noted specifically that Mr. Shokin was appointed to head a specialized anti-corruption office, and the move was described as “an indispensable component of an effective and independent institutional framework for combating high-level corruption.”  “Based on these commitments, the anti-corruption benchmark is deemed to have been achieved,” the European Commission report claimed. “The progress noted in the fifth report on anti-corruption policies, particularly the legislative and institutional progress, has continued.”

At least in November and December of 2015, the US State Department was likewise pleased.  They too declared they were “very impressed” with Mr. Shokin, and planned to release the billion dollars in question without any additional concessions.  They even wanted to invite Mr. Shokin to the White House.  It was only after the Vice President’s office personally intervened by writing a memo of their own that the policy began to change.  “There is wide agreement that anti-corruption must be at the top of this list,” the memo read, “and that reforms must include an overhaul of the Prosecutor General’s Office, including removal of Prosecutor General Shokin, who is widely regarded as an obstacle to fighting corruption, if not a source of the problem.”  Even so, it was not believed that firing Mr. Shokin was a requirement for the loan guarantee or that there would be any kind of quid pro quo at that time.  “Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk will be looking for tangible signs of U.S. support to assist the Ukrainian people during these difficult times, facilitate further reforms, and help with efforts to defend against Russian aggression.  You will sign our third billion-dollar loan guarantee and publicly announce FY 15 U.S. assistance for the first time: $189,035,756 — which does not include security assistance (previously announced separately),” the Vice President was instructed in a memo around the same time.  In fact, our own Ambassador to Ukraine was taken by surprise that he would demand the firing of Mr. Shokin.  Geoffrey Pyatt acknowledged this in testimony before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, claiming he was not even kept in the loop on these important developments. “I can’t help you on that,” he said. “If you look on the clearance page you will see that I actually didn’t see these documents until you guys sent them to me.”  He continued to equivocate, but certainly not to the benefit of Biden.  “This is an imperfect art.  And what it ultimately comes down to is the principal’s decision, and, you know, in this case how the Vice President based–and there would typically, before a big trip like this, a day or two before he got on the airplane there would have been a deputies’ or a principals’ level discussion.”

This is diplomat-speak for saying that the firing Mr. Shokin was the Vice President’s idea and his alone as the “principal.”  It was not shared by anyone at the time, nor was it official US or European policy until Vice President Biden himself forced the issue, which just happened to result in carrying out the desire of his son’s employer, who had paid Hunter somewhere around $11 million.  An unethical and corrupt conflict of interest doesn’t get any more clear cut, whether or not the behavior is actually criminal, and whether or not Vice President Biden himself believed he was acting in the best interests of the United States when forcing Ukraine to fire Mr. Shokin.  Ethically speaking, all that matters is that the parties involved entered into a corrupt conflict of interest with the full knowledge they were doing so, that they did precisely this and Vice President Biden ensured Burisma’s preferred policy was enacted is enough for an indictment of his ethics.  President Biden, therefore, is compromised whatever his defenders say, and given there were millions coming in from sources in China as well, it is likely the ethical issues go far beyond Ukraine. This might not be a matter for the courts at this time, but it certainly is relevant for voters evaluating his performance and character. The media and Democrats can pretend otherwise all the like, but I expect most people understand the difference and are beginning to become aware that President Biden is not the upright figure he’s claimed to be, far from it.