As is well documented, Biden was forced to drop out of the 1988 presidential race after being caught red-handed lying about his academic record and so thoroughly plagiarizing a speech by British Labor’s then-leader Neil Kinnock that he also invented hard-done-by coal-mining ancestors. Writes Alex Rose
Miranda Devine’s classic seems to have been forgotten. In the present-day contest between the Republicans and Democrats, the former are hardly making use of its valued content in their arguments.
“The most invasive data breach imaginable is a political scandal Democrats can’t just wish away” by Andrew Rice and Olivia Nuzzi [Intelligencer, September 12, 2022].
Journalist Miranda Divine begins her subject thoughtful book with the statement, “In the Spring of 2019, 4 years after the death of his brother Beau, Hunter Biden was falling apart. His crack addiction was raging, his wife of 24 years had divorced him, his steamy affair with Beau’s widow Hallie, was on the rocks. A stripper from Arkansas had launched a paternity suit.”
In April, his father, former vice president Joe Biden, announced he was running for president. Two weeks later, Hunter left his laptop at a Mac repair shop in Delaware and never came back. Photographs of Hunter’s rampant drug use and explicit homemade pornography were all over the laptop. But the real news value lay in the corporate documents, bank transfers and emails detailing a vast international influence-peddling scheme, sanctioned by the world’s most despotic regime—- and implicating ‘Honest Joe’ bidding himself.
The laptop also put the lie to President Biden’s repeated claims that he knew nothing about his son’s shady business ventures in China, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Russia, and beyond.
-Joe Biden threatened to withhold $1 million in US aid unless the Ukrainian government fired its top prosecutor, who was pursuing Burisma for corruption at the time.
-But soon, after the Post’s story broke online social media censored it-it was a chilling exercise of raw political power by an unaccountable Big Tech-the coordinated censorship of America’s oldest newspaper-amounted to election interference
-If the full story of the Biden’s international influence-peddling scheme had been told before the election it could have–possibly, flipped the results
-Divine authenticated material on the laptop by interviewing several recipients of Hunter’s emails and messages.
-Hunter’s laptop tells an alarming story of the national interest sold out for personal gain at the highest level. The president cannot extricate his family’s money making schemes from America’s foreign policy imperatives.
An abbreviated sequence of events:
[Page 54] “It would be father’s cultivation of China’s future president Xi Jinping that would provide his family’s most lucrative payday—But it would also bring Hunter to the brink of ruin.”
[Page 96] By taking a job with Burisma, the hapless Hunter also found himself at the center of a titanic struggle between the US and Russia over energy. It would not be the last time he bumbled into a geopolitical powder keg.”
[Page 115] “—-it would be naïve for Americans not to appreciate the expectations attached to Hunter Biden’s shareholding in a Chinese firm—-and access to the inner sanctum of China’s elite.”
[Page 144] “Through 2015 and 2016, Hunter and his partners had been using the Biden name to open doors—–around the world——Now that Joe was out of office it was time to be paid.”
[Page 180] “Hunter’s lie is a mess, but it will only get worse—–as his crack addiction spirals out of control——He is putting at risk his father’s last chance to run for president, but he is at the point where he doesn’t care.”
[Page 207] “Hunter said in his memoir that he was ‘100% certain’ that the Department of Justice investigation into his finances would clear him of wrongdoing. And if not, there was always Dad’s pardon power.”
Devine’s book contains nothing that hasn’t been previously reported by herself or published by the Post, Fox News, etc. Hunter’s addiction and other problems are acknowledged in his memoir [‘Beautiful Things’] and children of famous persons taking advantage of the family name is nothing new.
After studying several reviews, I selected, “The Biden Family’s Corruption” by Mark Powell, a Presbyterian Minister, posted on Quadrant during Nov 2021. He commences, as follows:
“Miranda Devine’s ‘Laptop from Hell [Post Hill Press, 2021], is a riveting read. Indeed, following Hunter Biden’s misadventures and the mainstream attempts to ignore and, indeed suppress his abandoned hard drive’s revelations is akin watching a train wreck. You just can’t look away. Divine writes with such clarity and concision that the 200-plus pages and 21 chapters can be easily digested in not much more than a single sitting.”
His 1st question, in his words, is obvious: How could Hunter Biden, someone with so much to hide, hand over his personal computer to a 3rd party and then lose track of it? He suggests that by reading the final chapter 1st one finds the answer. Surprisingly on April 12, 2019, Hunter Biden delivered one of three laptops to Mac Isaac for repair. He also signed them over, provided his personal phone number and email address.
After failing to pay the $85 repair bill–and repeated attempts by Isaac to call Hunter in vain bids to pick it up–the laptop and its contents were deemed to be abandoned and, after 90 days, became the legal property of Mac Isaac. With the presidential race approaching, Isaac realized there was incriminating evidence on the laptop which linked the Bidens, father and son, to shady business dealings in the Ukraine.
Divine establishes beyond doubt how Hunter Biden not only traded on the family name in the Ukraine, Russia and China, but specifically leveraged his father’s position as the Vice-President for financial gain. The Democrats tried to impeach Trump for something similar, but- no surprise – “no one on Capitol Hill or in the press and law enforcement is threatening to come after Biden or is ever likely to do so.”
How Biden could claim to occupy the higher moral ground demonstrates just how bizarre the world has become. As is well documented, Biden was forced to drop out of the 1988 presidential race after being caught red-handed lying about his academic record and so thoroughly plagiarizing a speech by British Labor’s then-leader Neil Kinnock that he also invented hard-done-by coal-mining ancestors.
“In this post-truth, media-manipulated world we can be confident President Biden will continue to receive a free pass. For the press to dig into the laptop’s contents, to follow the links and expose the connections would be a tacit confirmation that Donald Trump was right. The Left-colonized newsrooms of the world could never, will never, allow that.
“Apart from anything else it would lay bare their own corruption. ‘The man of integrity walks securely, but he who takes crooked paths will be found out.’ Whether that’s in Joe Biden’s current existence remains to be seen“.
