On a day when American newsrooms were in panic that their careful packaging of the Kamala Harris campaign was under assault by the Trump-Musk conversation on X, which may have attracted as many as a billion views, the New York Times let an explosive story slip onto its front pages.
“Hunter Biden Sought State Department Help for Ukrainian Company,” the headline screamed. The subheadline was even more damaging:
After President Biden dropped his re-election bid, his administration released records showing that while he was vice president, his son solicited U.S. government assistance.
The Times has not been kind to Biden in recent weeks. It was the first major media outlet to publicly suggest that Biden should drop out of the race after the Atlanta debate. It also teamed up with Hollywood star and fundraiser George Clooney on an op-ed with the same message. Whether this story was to denigrate Biden further and turn a new leaf on Kamala Harris will never be known. However, the Times’ acknowledgment that the information was always available and the administration held it from public view until Biden dropped his re-election bid was an astonishing rebuke.
The background to the Times story goes back to when Hunter Biden served on the Ukrainian energy company Burisma board from 2014 through 2019, earning $50,000 – $75,000 a month as a director. Hunter’s role on the board was to enforce “governance and transparency,” although he had no prior experience in this area, had never worked in Ukraine, and had little knowledge of the energy industry. For the first two years of his directorship, his tenure conveniently coincided with Joe Biden’s position as Vice President and President Obama’s point man on Ukraine.
Burisma was owned by a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch, Mykola Zlochevsky. British authorities had seized his assets, totaling $23 million, in London just a few weeks before Hunter assumed his role. To most observers, it was evident that the company board was trying to gain influence by getting Biden to pressure the Ukrainian government to go easy on Burisma.
Indeed, in 2016, Joe Biden publicly pressured the Ukrainian government to fire Viktor Shokin, the country’s Prosecutor General, whose office was investigating Burisma, among other institutions. Biden recalled in a 2018 event at the Council on Foreign Relations:
I was supposed to announce in Kyiv that there was another billion-dollar loan guarantee. I got the commitment that they would take action against the state prosecutor…..You are not getting the billion dollars. I’m leaving in six hours. The prosecutor is not fired; you are not getting the money. Son of a bitch, he got fired.
Biden was also dismissive of internal State Department concerns that Hunter’s role in Burisma and the implied influence peddling on the Biden family name would hurt the reputation of the United States government. According to a United States Senate report, George Kent, the former Acting Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, raised concerns to officials in Vice President Joe Biden’s office in early 2015 about the perception of a conflict of interest regarding Hunter’s role on Burisma’s board. In September 2016, he emphasized in an email to his colleagues, “Furthermore, the presence of Hunter Biden on the Burisma board was very awkward for all U.S. officials pushing an anticorruption agenda in Ukraine.” Biden and his inner circle ignored these concerns.
Fast-forward to yesterday and the Times revealed that Hunter was active in influence peddling after all: “Hunter Biden sought assistance from the U.S. government for a potentially lucrative energy project in Italy while his father was vice president…Hunter wrote at least one letter to the U.S. ambassador to Italy in 2016 seeking assistance for the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, where he was a board member.” The Times story confirmed that the Biden administration had withheld this truth from the public for years.
Perhaps the Times felt guilty tarnishing the Biden family so publicly, for it took pains to explain how there was nothing fundamentally conspiratorial about it. The White House said the President was unaware that Hunter had sought the U.S. embassy’s help in Italy when he was vice president. Hunter Biden has not been charged with violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The State Department is notoriously slow when it comes to releasing public records. Career public servants, not political appointees, oversaw the records release process. The information was only revealed after the Times filed a Freedom of Information request. Each excuse was meant to mask the death blow that the Times has dealt the Biden family.
It is a victory lap for us. The Biden family has shown they will go to any length to protect themselves, including deliberately withholding information from the public that could be detrimental to Biden or Hunter. President Biden has been extraordinarily protective of Hunter, defending him repeatedly, although the evidence pointed to questionable behavior. In a 2019 interview with ABC News, Biden asserted that Hunter’s work with Burisma was above board and that there was no evidence of wrongdoing. During a 2020 presidential debate, Biden stated he had never discussed his son’s business with him and criticized the allegations against Hunter as a political attack. Biden even said that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation, an assertion we know today is false.
Now, even the Times is revealing that Hunter used his perch on Burisma’s board to ask American officials (when Biden was vice president) for formal U.S. government help through a Commerce Department program. The request was for American officials to arrange an introduction between Burisma and the president of the Tuscany region of Italy, where Burisma was pursuing a geothermal project. It was an extraordinary case of using family connections to leverage taxpayer resources for personal gain.
President Trump was right to ask Zelenskyy to investigate Biden’s family connections and dealings in Ukraine. Instead, Adam Schiff and Alexander Vindman helped impeach Trump and kick start a cycle of Congressional action against him, leading to Trump’s second impeachment and the 18-month-long partisan J6 Committee proceedings.
TIPP Takes
Geopolitics, Geoeconomics, And More
1. Gaza Ceasefire: Hamas To Stay Out Of New Round Of Talks, Iran Considers Israel Attack – Reuters
The Palestinian group Hamas said it would not take part in a new round of Gaza ceasefire talks slated for Thursday in Qatar, dimming hopes for a negotiated truce that Iranian sources say could hold back an Iranian attack on Israel.
The U.S. has said it expects indirect talks to go ahead as planned in Qatar’s capital, Doha, on Thursday and that a ceasefire agreement is still possible.
2. Hamas Official Says Group Is Losing Faith In U.S. As Mediator In Gaza Ceasefire Talks – A.P.
Osama Hamdan said in an interview that Hamas would only participate if the talks focused on implementing a proposal detailed by U.S. President Joe Biden in May and endorsed internationally.
Hamas is especially resistant to Israel’s demand that it maintain a lasting military presence in two strategic areas of Gaza after any ceasefire, conditions that were only made public in recent weeks.
3. Israel Approves New Settlement On UNESCO Site Near Bethlehem – AFP
Bezalel Smotrich – the far-right finance minister – who also heads civil affairs at the defense ministry, said his office had “completed its work and published a plan for the new Nahal Heletz settlement in Gush Etzion,” a bloc of settlements south of Jerusalem.
All of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank occupied since 1967, are considered illegal under international law, regardless of whether they have Israeli planning permission.
4. Ukraine Updates: Kyiv To Create ‘Buffer Zone’ In Kursk – D.W.
Ukraine says its army will allow the evacuation of civilians from Russia’s Kursk region and open up the area to international humanitarian organizations.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says his country’s forces are “strictly” following humanitarian law and international conventions as they advance into the western Russian region of Kursk. President Joe Biden said Kyiv’s military success in Kursk was a ‘real dilemma’ for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
5. Russia’s Belgorod Border Region Declares Emergency Amid Ukraine Incursion – UPI
Russia’s southwestern Belgorod Oblast declared a state of emergency across the entire region as Kyiv intensified its attacks on Russian territory amid a fast-developing ground offensive along its border with Ukraine.
Gov. Viacheslav Gladkov said he had decided to deal with the “extremely difficult” situation created by constant shelling by Ukrainian forces of the border region that had injured civilians and caused widespread damage.
6. Russian Ruble Rebounds After Touching 10-Month Low – Reuters
By 6 p.m. on August 14, Moscow time, the ruble was 1.7 percent stronger at 89.00 to the dollar after losing 8.5 percent since the start of Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region on August 6.
The ruble briefly touched a 10-month low against the dollar during trading on August 13. The ruble’s weakening against the dollar and euro has continued despite support from higher oil prices and increased net daily sales of the Chinese yuan by the Russian central bank and Finance Ministry.
7. China Says It ‘Destroyed Large Network’ Of Taiwanese Spies – RFA
China has “destroyed” a large network of Taiwanese spies in the mainland and uncovered more than 1,000 espionage cases undertaken by Taiwan, China’s security ministry said as it vowed to fight “separatism.”
Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, which is responsible for cross-strait affairs, said in response to a query that the Chinese security department’s announcement illustrated its use of “vague and unclear laws” to detain people from Taiwan who do not conform to the political ideology of China’s ruling Communist Party.
8. China Top Diplomat Meets Myanmar Leader, Junta Denies Coup Rumors – RFA
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with Myanmar ruler Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing and highlighted Beijing’s continued support for the military regime, even as the junta had to dispel rumors of a coup.
The talks in Naypyidaw came amid rumors swirling on social media that Min Aung Hlaing had been detained as part of an internal coup orchestrated by a military adjutant general on Tuesday evening.
9. U.S. Chip, EV Industries Struggle To Take Off Despite Huge Subsidies – Nikkei Asia
Two years after the U.S. passed major legislation to promote its domestic chip and electric vehicle industries, getting projects to the actual production stage and reducing supply chain reliance on China remain a challenge.
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and CHIPS and Science Act, enacted in August 2022, have allocated roughly $500 billion in funding toward EVs, renewables, and semiconductors to bolster production in areas where China has rapidly risen.
10. Trump’s China Comments To Musk Hint At Pragmatic Approach: Analysts – Nikkei Asia
Eager to gain insights into former President Donald Trump’s latest worldview, foreign policy analysts in Washington are poring over the transcript of the Republican presidential candidate’s conversation with Tesla CEO Elon Musk earlier this week.
The interview, hosted on Musk’s social media platform X without time constraints, gave Trump a rare opportunity to delve into his views on war and how to prevent it. The former president signals different calculations over the use of force from Biden.
11. North Korea Warns South Korea, Japan Will Be Nuclear ‘Cannon Fodder’ – UPI
North Korean state media has warned that strengthening trilateral ties with Washington risks turning the people of South Korea and Japan into “cannon fodder” for a nuclear attack.
An unsigned commentary in the state-run Korean Central News Agency said that military threats from the United States have forced the North into “bolstering up its nuclear war deterrence.” The article added that growing security ties among the United States, Japan, and Tokyo in response to North Korean threats have created a “serious tripartite security crisis” in the region.
12. Sudan Truce Talks Start In Switzerland Without Sudanese Army – D.W.
Delegates from Sudan started talks in Switzerland on the 16-month civil war, with the U.S. playing a key role in the summit.
Washington hopes to secure a truce allowing humanitarian aid to reach those in need. However, achieving this goal is likely harder due to the absence of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), which rejected the U.S. invitation. The talks are held at an undisclosed location and could last up to 10 days.
13. WHO Declares Mpox Global Health Emergency – BBC
The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the mpox outbreak in parts of Africa a public health emergency of international concern.
The highly contagious disease – formerly known as monkeypox – has killed at least 450 people during an initial outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It has now spread across parts of central and east Africa, and scientists are concerned about how fast a new variant of the disease is spreading and its high fatality rate.
14. NZ Charity Unknowingly Distributes Meth-Laced Sweets – BBC
Police in New Zealand are racing to trace sweets containing “potentially lethal levels of methamphetamine” after they were distributed by a charity in Auckland.
The anti-poverty charity said up to 400 people may have received the sweets from Auckland City Mission as part of a food parcel. A member of the public donated the sweets anonymously in a sealed retail package. “We did not know that the lollies contained methamphetamine when they were distributed,” the charity’s spokesperson told the BBC.
15. Chemicals In Makeup, Sunscreen May Increase Risk Of Pregnancy Complications – HealthDay News
Phenols and parabens in these products increase a pregnant woman’s risk of high blood pressure by 57%, particularly at 24 to 28 weeks of gestation, researchers reported.
Phenols and parabens’ link to hypertension in pregnancy is troubling. High blood pressure during pregnancy reduces blood flow to the placenta, so the fetus might wind up starved of oxygen and nutrients. As a result, the fetus might suffer from restricted growth, low birth weight, and premature birth, the researchers explained.
16. Cigarette Smoking Hits 80-Year Low In U.S. – UPI
The latest survey, based on Gallup’s annual Consumption Habits poll conducted in July, shows 11% of U.S. adults said they smoked cigarettes in the past week.
In 1944, when Gallup first questioned Americans about cigarettes, 41% of adults said they had smoked. Smoking peaked in 1954, with 45% of respondents admitting they had recently lit up a cigarette. By the late 1980s, the smoking rate had declined but was still more than three times what it is today.
Republished with permission from TIPP Insights
