The Biden Paradox

For anyone unfamiliar with Vice President Joe Biden’s “interaction” with Ukraine in 2016, the best synopsis of it is from the mouth of Joe Biden himself:

“I remember going over (to Ukraine), convincing our team … that we should be providing for loan guarantees. … And I was supposed to announce that there was another billion-dollar loan guarantee. And I had gotten a commitment from (then Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko) and from (then-Prime Minister Arseniy) Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor (Shokin). And they didn’t…” he said.

“They were walking out to a press conference. I said, nah, … we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, ‘You have no authority. You’re not the president.’ … I said, call him. I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. … I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a bitch. He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”

Biden made this statement in 2018 at an event sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations. When the above-described interaction occurred, the Vice President’s son, Hunter Biden, was employed by a Ukrainian-based energy company (Burisma) about to be investigated by the state prosecutor (Viktor Shokin).  Evidence shows Biden’s tacit reason for holding up this money to Ukraine was to shield his son from an investigation into his  employer led by Mr. Shokin.¹ Quite clearly, if Shokin was fired, Vice President Biden would have gained an advantage that was “personal” to him (the continued employment of his son untouched by the investigative tentacles of an aggressive prosecutor). Is this not the exact same misconduct President Trump is being accused of? For comparison, here is the excerpt from the transcript of Trump’s July 25^th phone call with the new President of Ukraine that is the basis for the impeachment proceedings:

 “…The other thing, there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me.”

 Of significance in this phone call is that the President never mentions withholding money or makes any reference to money at all. This is a clear distinction from Vice President Biden’s statement where the withholding of money to coerce an action was directly stated.

In both cases, each man has presented as his defense a scenario in which the solicitation made to the Ukrainian government could be interpreted as being within the bounds of normal diplomacy. Vice President Biden claims that he was simply wanting to help Ukraine rid itself of rampant corruption, and since the prosecutor in question was corrupt, his solicitation to remove the prosecutor served that end. The fact that his son was being paid a large stipend from the company that this prosecutor was investigating was just pure coincidence. President Trump claims that he was simply wanting to get more information on Vice President Biden’s apparent attempt to help his son by improperly meddling in Ukraine’s internal affairs. The fact that Mr. Biden happens to be a candidate in the Democrat primary for the 2020 election is just pure coincidence.

While both these “alternate” explanations are possible, human nature and our gut instinct tells us neither one of them is likely. In reference to President Trump’s statement cited above in the July 25^th phone call, Harvard law professor Noah Feldman said this while testifying at the impeachment hearings last week:

“According to the testimony presented to the House, the solicitation sought to gain an advantage that was personal to the President”.

If that is true, how could the 2016 conversation between Vice President Biden and the Ukrainian President not also be a solicitation sought to gain an advantage that was personal to the Vice President? If anything, the Biden conversation was much closer to a coercive transaction than Trump’s since it included a specific amount of money in the solicitation (a billion dollars).

Nevertheless, the Biden conversation is currently being treated not only as “normal” diplomacy, but as a respectable show of strength and a properly aggressive stance to a corrupt foreign country. On the other hand, Trump’s conversation with the Ukrainian President is being described as one of the most egregiously illicit acts by any President in the 231-year history of Presidents. Michael Gerhardt, another law professor testifying in the House hearings last week said it was

 “worse than the misconduct of any prior president”.

The lopsided inconsistency in the treatment of these two cases is entirely due to the Democrat majority in the House of Representatives being able to control both the impeachment proceedings and the narrative. A news media arrayed almost entirely against the President assists them. That will all change in dramatic fashion if/when the impeachment case goes to the Republican controlled Senate. In addition to Republicans being in control of the proceedings (and the narrative), there will be an actual trial with real lawyers, a real judge, and well-established rules. This is in stark contrast to the House rules and procedures which are being created on the fly by the Democrat led Judiciary and Intelligence Committees. These hyper-partisan House rules have turned the impeachment inquiry into a pageant featuring nothing more than a parade of partisans.

We must admit to being completely stumped as to why the Democrats want to proceed down this path. The likelihood of a super-majority in the Republican-controlled Senate voting to remove the President is minuscule. And the likelihood that Joe Biden’s interactions with Ukraine will be highlighted and brought into focus is very high. That raises the specter of the leading candidate for the Democrat nomination being shown in a very public forum to have committed the same “crime” (or worse) as President Trump.  The Democrats would be asking the country to elect a new President in 2020, who by his own admission, has already committed an impeachable offense while holding the second highest office in the land!

Maybe this “outing” of Joe Biden is intentional by the Dems. After all, despite the fact that he is leading in the national polls for the nomination, he is a high-risk candidate. His persistent gaffes, his age, and his old-school manner all work against him in public appearances. Add to that several weeks of a Senate impeachment trial highlighting Vice President Biden’s extortion of the Ukrainian government to help his son, and he will become even less attractive. Intolerably so for younger voters. The Democrat leadership must know this, so one can only assume that by forcing an impeachment trial in the Senate which they will most certainly lose, they intend for this to happen. But while getting rid of candidate Biden in this twisted way could make sense, the new front runner in the remaining field of contenders would be Bernie Sanders, a candidate the party has already chewed up and spit out once before.

If there is logic to the plan the Democrats seem to be following, it eludes us. No matter how you look at it, Trump remains in office and Joe Biden is tattooed with the same extortion charge of which Trump is accused. We suspect there is something else afoot here we don’t know about.

¹The following fact evidence was spoken into the impeachment inquiry record by ranking Intelligence Committee member Devin Nunes:

• In September 2015 the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine asked for an investigation into the president of Burisma, the Ukrainian natural gas company on whose board Hunter Biden served, reportedly at a salary of about $50,000 per month. Hunter Biden has no expertise on Ukraine or on the natural gas industry.
• Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent, who testified last in the impeachment hearings, characterized Hunter Biden’s position on the Burisma board while his father was vice president as a potential conflict of interest (as other witnesses have confirmed).
• Burisma routed over $3 million to accounts tied to Hunter Biden.
• Burisma’s American legal representatives met with Ukrainian officials just days after Joe Biden forced the firing of the Ukraine’s chief prosecutor, who was looking into Burisma.
• Burisma’s lawyers pressured the U.S. State Department in February 2016, after a law enforcement raid on the home of Burisma’s president, and used Hunter Biden’s name as a reason to intervene.
• Joe Biden called the president of Ukraine at least three times after the raid on the home of Burisma’s president.