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Joe Biden had been out of office for months at the time that email was sent. You can't bribe a private citizen.
I really have trouble treating this as a serious claim. Do you actually, really, seriously mean that someone should be free to accept as much money for as many quid pro quos as they can arrange while in between their Vice Presidency and Presidency, so long as money doesn't change hands while they're in office? If, right now, Vladimir Putin just openly offered Donald Trump a billion dollars in cash, that wouldn't be a problem if he wins office in 2024?
You speak as though Biden's presidency (and candidacy, for that matter), was a fair accompli. In May of 2017, there wasn't even much media speculation about who the Dem nominee would be. If Trump gave Putin a million dollars right now, it would certainly be a problem, but it would be more a political problem than a legal one unless there were actual evidence that Putin expected something in return. Even then, the insinuation would be different; it's a political problem because Trump has a record of appearing soft on Russia and this opens him to accusations that he's not exactly disinterested when it comes to certain foreign affairs questions. I have yet to hear anyone on the right make the argument that these alleged deals have had any impact at all on how Biden deals with China. It's a lead balloon as a political question so they're trying to dress it up as a crime when it isn't.
You speak as if it is obvious it wasn't a reward for past behavior.
And yes. Biden's public actions in China and Ukraine seem fairly corrupt.
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There is a million dollars of actual evidence. I assume you meant Putin giving Trump money. No political figure just arbitrarily gifts another large amounts of money out of the goodness of their heart. We don't need to know the specifics to know something is wrong, and certainly we don't need to know the specifics before evaluating whether to inform the public of what is known.
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If you'll forgive the blatant whataboutism (though given that I'm swimming in whataboutisms it seems like that's just the way the game is played 'round here these days), do you feel the same way about Kushner taking 2 billion dollars from Saudi Arabia months after playing a major role managing US relations in the middle east in Trump's white house?
Joe Biden's net worth is something like 9 million dollars. His tax filings are public. He isn't taking millions of dollars worth of bribes from foreign officials. At best you could argue that Hunter Biden (net worth 250 mil) is doing the dirty work of selling influence on Biden senior's policy choices, as others have in this thread, although that doesn't square very well with the '10 held by H for the big guy' narrative.
Wait, Hunter has 250 million dollars? That raises my probability estimate for corruption substantially. The guy is tits on a boar, and I could see him running some fake-influence scam enough to fund his crack habit -- but that is serious dollars. If he's being paid that kind of money and not delivering, he'd be dead in a ditch by now.
I had the same realization the other day as I was comparing Xi Jinping (1.2 billion) and Putin (200 billion) to Biden's 9 million, before idly checking Hunter's net worth. It's lamentable how much more talented the autocrats are compared to our feckless western leaders.
But, why do you think Hunter is so useless? Drugs and guns aside, he has a law degree from Yale. He was a consultant and VP at a banking company, a lobbyist, tapped by Clinton and Bush for various roles and a hedge fund manager all before Joe was veep. It's not an unimpressive CV, or at least it wasn't before all the drugs and congressional investigations caught up to him.
His texts read like someone who could be a guest on Jerry Springer.
I question if he actually earned his degree or if that was a favor to his father.
Indeed. As far as I can tell, that makes him exceedingly qualified to run for president.
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What exactly does this text message mean in the context of your statement? Hunter Biden is on the record complaining about how Joe takes half of his salary, so we know that there's a direct relation between the money that Hunter has been making and Joe's financial resources.
Why was Joe Biden using lines of credit set up by Hunter? I don't see how you can square your view of the situation with the texts and emails that we actually have access to thanks to the laptop.
I don't have a satisfying answer, although the text you're citing isn't what was given as evidence a couple posts above.
The flip side to that question is, if true, where is the money going? Hunter Biden is worth 250 million, so we're talking a 7 figure salary, no? Joe Biden's net worth is estimated to be 9 million, so if Hunter is kicking him back 5 million a year, where is the money going? Presumably not real estate and cars, unless he's got a couple dozen lambos tucked away in the Delaware batcave.
Digging into articles on the subject, they don't exactly paint a picture of Hunter funding Joe's lavish lifestyle:
Don't know. Curious to see what they were buying, or if there's any evidence that Joe was actually making extravagant purchases anywhere in the ballpark of what you're alleging.
Maybe to his son, who is somehow worth 25x as much as Joe despite executing a business strategy of smoking crack with loose women?
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Why the heck does an 80 year old want a lavish lifestyle? My grandpa is 100 and has been telling me for 20 years about how he hopes to die soon because everything sucks. His feet hurt, his hips hurt, he can't taste Borsht anymore. Anyone nearly that old with children is living strictly for his progeny.
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83k a month from the Burisma job specifically.
I do not know exactly how Joe Biden laundered the proceeds of his crimes, or why they aren't included in an "estimation" of his net worth - your objection immediately falls apart when I point out that an estimation is not a serious, rigorous and independent audit, but I think the claim is actually even weaker than that. In the same way that my inability to explain exactly which creature first developed an eye is not evidence against the theory of evolution, my inability to clearly identify the bank account Biden used to store the proceeds of his crimes is not evidence that the crimes did not take place.
Alleging? I think the word you're actually looking for is "providing clear and undeniable evidence of" - the texts are legitimate and real. The fact that I do not know exactly how Joe Biden hid and/or spent the proceeds of his influence-trading and ostensibly illegal bribery is not an argument against him receiving the funds at all. If I won the lottery and then continued to live largely the same as I did before (except for spending vast sums of cash on illegal drugs in a manner that would not show up on my official tax return), would you take this as evidence that I did not actually win the lottery? You've presented a standard of evidence which cannot be satisfied without total access to the President of the United State's financial details, including ones he explicitly wishes to keep hidden as they constitute evidence of criminal behaviour.
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Yes. Kushner and Trump should be investigated for it.
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Although he accepted the money after potentially influencing the behavior of the state and not before, I feel comfortable saying this is extremely suspicious and in absence of further information, a strong indicator of corruption in my eyes.
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Why doesn't that square well? Makes sense to me.
Maybe I misread it. I initially parsed it as Hunter holding '10' temporarily with the intention of passing it off to Joe. I suppose the more likely reading is that he just holds it...although I don't know why you would make that reference at all in that case.
I think the intention is to pass it off, but in a more oblique way than by transferring the equity directly. Just send funds wherever Joe says.
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Straightforwardly - yes. I don't feel inclined towards any equivocation, I think it's very bad!
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If there's nothing wrong with it, why not give the equity to Biden directly? They clearly thought it would look bad, and they were right.
Besides, you absolutely can bribe private citizens in many different ways. Bribe someone just before they win an election, bribe someone to ensure a corporate deal goes your way, bribe someone so that your words reach the right ears--bribery is absolutely a thing in the private sphere. The first is the most relevant--it's really not that hard to bribe a few presidential candidates, and then you'll surely have their ear if one of them makes it into office.
Moreover the whole scheme is do something for someone when in office, and they take care of you when out of office. If they don’t take care of you, then you tell others and they are fucked.
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You can bribe private citizens in the colloquial sense but not in the criminal sense, which is the only sense that matters here. It's also unclear what Joe Biden was supposed to have done in return. It also seems noteworthy that Joe apparently turned down the offer.
The colloquial sense absolutely matters here. If the people are to be governed by agents they select to carry out their wishes through the mechanism of the state, evidence that those agents may have accepted payments to enact the wishes of another party through the mechanisms of the state seems to me to be relevant to the people's decision making process.
Likelyhood of defection is highly relevant in optimizing agent selection.
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No, the criminal sense is not what matters here. What matters is whether Biden was influenced by the bribes that he took to an undue extent. BTW the original poster didn't even mention Joe taking bribes but rather Hunter, who certainly seems to have accepted some in exchange for peddling influence. When you're an octogenarian one is just as good as the other.
Yes, what Joe was supposed to do in return is unclear, but apparently the people doing the bribing had something valuable in mind, and that's all we need to know. There's no way they paid 6-7 figures just for a banal conversation about the weather with Joe.
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