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Notes -
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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