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Slow morning, eh?
For some time now, we've been discussing the implications of Hunter Biden's laptop, and whether the information it contained was relevant to our political system. Thanks to the Twitter Files, we know that the FBI knew about the laptop's contents roughly a year in advance of the 2020 election, and used its official access with the major social media companies to prepare their censors to perceive the story as Russian disinformation. Then when the story actually broke in the press, the FBI successfully pushed the social media companies to censor it.
From the laptop information itself, we know that for quite a while now, Hunter Biden has been engaged in various grifts, selling purported access to his father in exchange for lucrative sinecures with various foreign corporations, selling "art" for amusingly inflated values, and so on. The supposition on the Red side has been that this grift implicated Biden as well, and Trump's attempts to have that theory investigated led directly to his first impeachment. The laptop emails backed this story with evidence, with Hunter referencing how "the big guy" was getting a significant cut of his grift money, and one of his associates confirming that "the big guy" was in fact Joe Biden.
Blues on the other hand claimed that there was no reason to suppose any corruption was happening. While Hunter was obviously a junkie fuckup grifter, and was obviously making his money claiming to peddle influence, there was no evidence of actual payments going to Joe, so this was all meaningless. My impression of the previous threads is that even those here who thought Hunter was paying Joe, assumed that there would be no formal exchange of money, but rather quid-pro-quo.
Now it appears that Hunter Biden has been paying rent to live in his father's residence in Delaware, to the tune of $49,901 per month. For completeness' sake, it must be mentioned that this is the same residence where Joe was found to be improperly storing classified documents, alongside his Corvette. While it seems doubtful that the files would be of interest to a junkie who prospers by peddling influence for foreign corporations, it's a detail that does add a touch of piquancy to the overall narrative.
So this appears to me to be pretty open-and-shut. Joe Biden is corrupt, selling influence to foreign corporations in China and Eastern Europe through his son Hunter. Hunter collects the money, then kicks a large slice back to Joe through rent, and quite possibly other, yet undiscovered "repayments". Trump was impeached when he attempted to have these activities investigated, while the FBI sat on the information they were given, and engaged in a protracted disinformation and censorship campaign to keep that information from leaking elsewhere. That information does in fact lead to provable direct payments from Hunter to Biden.
Impeachment when?
[EDIT] - ...Or perhaps not! @firmamenti points out that while Hunter is apparently living in the residence and renting an office space for 50k, the office space is not specified to be in the residence, and very well could be an entirely separate location entirely unconnected to Biden. The hunt continues...
I think pet of the issue here is that the prior on Joe Biden being corrupt is low, so you need more than circumstantial evidence to make people who are not already anti-Biden partisans care.
The theory that the MAGA crowd are pushing is that Joe Biden decided to run a large scale influence peddling operation, employed his junkie failson as a key fixer in it when he could have hired a professional, and then didn’t spend the money. That is possible, but it is not likely compared to a junkie failson ripping off clueless foreigners by selling influence with Dad he didn’t have and spending the money on blow and hookers.
I thought the prior on Joe being corrupt was quite high. And basically assumed (along with most career politician earning thru some kind of grift). I also assume McConnell is probably corrupt. Nancy has likely traded on inside information.
The question on Joe i feel is whether he was being corrupt in ways that everyone does their corruption. Hunter Biden getting 300k a year to to work for the Delaware teachers union is corruption that we all accept and tolerate. Hunter working for a ukranian oligarchs energy firm was in my view past the line for acceptable or legal corruption.
Also been noticing on oline message boards a shift in tone of Joes corruption. People use to deny he was “the big guy” and that he did the bad kind of corruption. Now it seems like arguments run to sure he’s corrupt but you can’t “prove it”.
The prior is low because actual corrupt people who have served as a US Senator for 40 years make a lot more income than he did. And, yes, the relevant source of information is indeed the person's tax return, since that is the point of becoming a politician if you are corrupt: to earn lots of legal, or at least apparently legal, income.
Hunter seems to pay for a lot of his dad’s expenses. This would be a way to funnel money to his dad without reporting it. Of course, that means Joe also committed tax fraud. So perhaps another thing to impeach him over if true.
The recipient of a gift does not have to report the gift as income. The giver reports the gift and pays any applicable gift tax.
Read my response to Rov Scam? There is a lot of caselaw (see what I cited) distinguishing between a gift and payment for services that results in taxable income. Assuming Joe is being paid as part of the influence peddling scheme, then the transferor (ie Hunter) isn’t giving Joe the money just because Joe is his dad but is giving him the money due to the business arrangement. Accordingly that means the payment is not a gift but is actually income.
Well, that is a pretty big assumption. And, I said: "The prior is low because actual corrupt people who have served as a US Senator for 40 years make a lot more income than he did." Your response is "well, if you assume he was part of a influence peddling scheme, his true income was higher." But whether he is corrupt is the question at hand; that assumption assumes the conclusion. So, yes, if you already "know" the answer, all evidence to the contrary is supposedly false or actually supports your conclusion. But you don't know the answer.
You said we shouldn’t expect Joe Biden to be corrupt because he has a low amount of income. My retort was you are basing low amount of income because of what Biden reported. If Joe Biden’s expenses are paid by Hunter (consistent with what Hunter claims in the email) then of course Joe’s low amount of reported income is not predictive at all of whether Biden is corrupt. That is, what you are basing your prior off of is questionable because of the known arrangement. Neither of us can prove it either way right now but it isn’t fair to use a highly questionable prior to make a Bayesian judgement here.
My comment about tax fraud is to say that it’s possible Biden has committed more crime than merely influence peddling.
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No, it doesn't. Gift income isn't taxable. You may have heard of gift tax but that's something entirely different—the purpose behind it is to prevent people from ducking the estate tax by giving all their money away before they die. As such, the burden of paying the tax is on the donor, not the recipient. In other words, if Hunter giving his dad large sums of money causes any tax issue's, they're Hunter's tax issues.
No. If I am performing services and are paid for said services, but instead of receiving compensation directly the party receiving the services pays my expenses, then that is disguised compensation and is certainly taxable income I failed to report. Key case here is Commissioner v. Duberstein.
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