Hunter Biden is STILL Not Running for President — Truth, Lies & Politics

The NY Post ran a story Wednesday that claimed they had ‘secret’ Hunter Biden emails. Within minutes, the story was crumbling to pieces. Sketchy, untraceable documents, an even sketchier chain-of-custody, the involvement of known bad actors (Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani!), a bottom-feeding newspaper, with the byline of a Hannity producer (their first, evidently).

Sounds totally legit, right?

Trump and his associates have been going around and around on this Hunter Biden/Ukraine nonsense for the past couple years, or more. Where did they dig it all up? Russia, where else. It started off as Russian propaganda (someone to blame for the actual Russian interference and hacking in the 2016 election), and Trump latched onto it as a way to excuse his Russian pals and put the blame on Hillary and the Ukrainians. Somehow (stay with me) Hillary conspired with Ukraine to take down the Trump campaign because, that’s something an American presidential candidate would do, right? They also claimed Ukraine ended up with the server that had been hacked at the DNC (they didn’t, it’s still at the DNC).

It’s pretty crazy, right?

Once they bought that, then the Russians started with the whole idiotic ‘Hunter Biden’ nonsense. That story goes Hunter got a job on the board at a Ukrainian energy/gas company, Burisma (that’s true). They claim the county’s prosecutor, Viktor Mykolayovych Shokin was investigating Burisma, and Hunter used his father, Vice President Joe Biden, to pressure the president of the Ukraine to fire Shokin and end the investigation. The problem with this is, well, reality.

Viktor Shokin was corrupt, and the international community was calling for his ouster. He wasn’t investigating Burisma, which was part of the problem. With Shoklin dropping investigations and opening political ones, the western democracies took note and wanted Skokin out, as did the Obama administration. In fact, it was the policy of the Obama administration to get rid of Shokin. President Obama dispatched VP Biden to get the job done. Biden, again with the support of the international community, demanded the Skokin be fired. He was.

And of story.

Except that Skokin, angry at his dismissal, cooperated with the Russians in helping spread disinformation about his career, about the Ukraine, about the Bidens. The far right lapped it up, with ‘reporter’ John Solomon, through his position at the right-leaning The Hill newspaper, helping disseminate the story here in America. From there, it went to Trump who called in Rudy Giuliani (his personal lawyer) and dispatched him to the Ukraine. Once there, Rudy met for help and introductions with a couple shady ‘business men’ (now in federal custody) who illegally contributed millions to the GOP and Trump (hence the federal custody). It’s an ugly mess, made worse by deliberate disinformation and politics.

Trump, he seems to sincerely believe all this nonsense.

Culmination of this stupidly? Trump threatens to withhold needed financial aid (voted on and passed by congress) to Ukraine unless the new president announces a sham investigation into… Joe and Hunter Biden. Withholding aid for a personal foreign contribution to his re-election campaign. Word gets out gets out, complaint is filed, knowledge of the complaint is leaked, transcript is released (take that!) and Trump is impeached. The GOP-controlled senate let him go, of course. And then, the same GOP senate, to help out Trump, held a weeks-long ‘ investigation’ that found… nothing. But spent a lot of tax payer money doing it. They released a report in which they shoved every extraneous, embarrassing detail they could find about Hunter Biden, smearing a guy who is not even running.

Not a great moment for a Republican senate that was already an embarrassment to the country.

So, here we are again. More Russian disinformation about Hunter Biden, dripping with sketchiness and pushed to try and affect an election in the last couple weeks. And it’s about emails as well! It’s like Trump figured ‘it worked once, it’ll work again!”

This is not 2016, and no one, beyond the heavy breathers on the far right, cares about Hunter Biden’s fake emails.

Go. Vote.

Originally published at https://www.tomtalkspolitics.com on October 15, 2020.