Remember how Joe Biden has repeatedly claimed that he didn’t talk to his son Hunter about his business dealings?
Let’s re-rack one of the videos for you.
.@JoeBiden told @LiamWBZ on son Hunter’s former Ukraine job: “I don’t discuss business with my son…I don’t want to be accused of ‘Well you talk with your son’ or ‘You talk with your whenever.’” @cbsnews pic.twitter.com/t2DH48acXA
— Bo Erickson CBS (@BoKnowsNews) October 10, 2019
That of course wasn’t quite true as his son later acknowledged when he said they had a brief conversation about his business in Ukraine. Joe Biden was also seen in a picture on a golfing outing with Devon Archer, Hunter’s business partner.
There have been questions raised in the past about Joe Biden’s actions in relation to his son’s business. He threatened to withhold aid from Ukraine unless they fired a prosecutor who was allegedly investigating his son’s Ukrainian firm. He flew his son on Air Force 2 to China where his son then met with Chinese people in the process of finalizing a business deal. And he was questioned by Tom Brokaw about actions he had taken as a Senator backing policies supportive of MBNA while his son was working for them.
But now the Washington Examiner is raising even more questions about Joe Biden’s actions.
According to the Examiner, Biden intervened on at least two occasions, privately contacting two federal agencies dealing with issues on which his son was lobbying. That intervention could have helped Hunter to the tune of “tens of thousands of dollars.”
On Feb. 28, 2007, Biden contacted DHS to express that he was “concerned about the Department’s proposed chemical security regulations authorized by Section 550 of DHS Appropriations Act of 2007,” according to the department’s log of its contacts with members of Congress.
Section 550, which was passed in 2006 as part of the DHS appropriations bill, requires high-risk chemical plants to submit site safety plans to DHS for approval, including security credentialing and training for employees.
Eight weeks earlier, the Industrial Safety Training Council had hired Hunter Biden’s firm to lobby DHS on the issue. The trade group, which represents companies that provide safety training for chemical facility employees, was mounting a heavy lobbying campaign over section 550, submitting congressional testimony about the need to expand background checks for chemical plant employees.
The Industrial Safety Training Council was seeking to expand the “language in DHS legislation regarding security clearance and credentialing for chemical facility employees and employers” in January 2007, according to lobbying disclosure records.
The Industrial Safety Training Council paid Hunter’s firm, Oldaker, Biden & Belair, $200,000 between 2007 and the end of 2008.
In the second incident in 2007, Joe Biden reached out to the Attorney General at the time, Alberto Gonzales, to talk about expanding the federal fingerprint background check system.
“I write to request your assistance in implementing an expanded background check system for our nation’s volunteer organizations,” wrote Biden. “If we can work together to expand the number of volunteer organizations that have access to fast, accurate, and inexpensive fingerprint background checks, we will make significant and important strides in our ongoing effort to protect kids across our country.”
Biden added, “I would like to convene a small meeting with key representatives” from DOJ, the FBI, members of Congress and volunteer groups.
One of Hunter’s firm’s lobbying clients at the time, a coalition of state-level criminal justice advocates called SEARCH, was also lobbying the federal government for a broader fingerprint screening system at the time.
The same day as Biden’s letter, SEARCH adopted a resolution calling on Congress to consider “any effort to improve the quality, completeness and accessibility of criminal history records” and expand the current system to “allow the return of all criminal history record information maintained by the States on the search subject through a single fingerprint check.”
SEARCH was already paying Hunter’s firm for lobbying for criminal justice programs, paying them $114,000 in 2007. But after Joe Biden introduced a bill in March to establish a national fingerprint background check system for volunteer groups that worked with children, Hunter’s firm began lobbying for the bill and SEARCH paid the firm $93,000 that year.
Tom Anderson, Director of the National Legal and Policy Center, a government watchdog group, called out the appearance of impropriety, saying “it was implausible” that Joe Biden didn’t know about his son’s lobbying and that “sometimes appearances are exactly what they are.”
Indeed it’s hard to imagine Joe Biden just happened to reach out to federal agencies at the same time his son’s firm was lobbying on such issues. It’s the exact same problem that Tom Brokaw asked him about MBNA when Biden was running for president in 2008. What did Joe say then? “My son has never spoken to me”
In 2008, Biden was asked about Hunter's already shady conflict of interest dealings, and whether he would do anything as VP to prevent it
Biden's answer? "My son has never spoken to me"
Well, we know how that worked out!
Same Biden, same swamp!#DrainTheSwamp pic.twitter.com/bn1HUZt1H7
— Elizabeth Harrington (@LizRNC) October 14, 2019
Astonishing the number of coincidences between Joe Biden’s political actions and Hunter Biden’s business actions. For people who don’t talk.
At what point do the coincidences become too much?
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