I’m sorry, but any way you cut it, it
smells bad. We watch people sacrifice and step over the line all the time to
help their children get opportunities and advantages. Pretty natural parental
inclination. Could be to pay a bribe and falsify a college application to get
their less-than-qualified college applicant child “qualified.” Could be a
lucrative union apprenticeship that always seems to go to the son or daughter
of a union member, regardless of the fact that vastly better qualified people
are not even considered. Or those lucrative business opportunities that just
seem to drop into the lap of the son or daughter of an individual at the center
of political power in too many countries. Like the United States. It’s always
been this way, hasn’t it?
At the center of the impeachment
controversy today is Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, who took advantage of an
“opportunity” when his father was Vice President of the United States. “In
2014, Hunter, a not-very-successful lawyer who had been in and out of alcohol
rehabilitation and debt, landed a lucrative job working for a Ukrainian energy
mogul.
“Big mistake. His father was vice
president of the United States. No matter what work Hunter did or didn’t
perform, the aroma of influence-peddling was unavoidable. Second mistake: His
father didn’t try to talk him out of it.
“Hunter’s contract, which paid him
$50,000 a month for a period until he decided not to renew it in May, has given
President Trump and his personal investigator, Rudolph W. Giuliani, an enticing
target — perhaps even a way to knock a leading Democratic candidate out of the
2020 presidential race.” Doyle McManus writing for the October 2nd
Los Angeles Times. Joe loves his troubled son, but there is a lot more at stake
than parenting here.
Team Trump screamed Biden corruption,
but… “As more information about Hunter’s time in Ukraine has trickled out, no
evidence has turned up indicating that either Biden broke the law. Quite the
contrary.
“Trump, Giuliani and their surrogates
allege that, as vice president, Joe Biden pushed Ukraine to fire a prosecutor
because he was investigating Hunter’s patron. But the evidence available so far
shows Trump has the story backward: the U.S. and its European allies wanted the
prosecutor replaced because he wasn’t pursuing corruption vigorously enough.”
LA Times. Still smells bad even if nothing illegal happened. But is there a
double standard working here? Don, Jr. Eric. Ivanka? Aren’t they beneficiaries
of a daddy in the White House? Do their deals smell any better than Hunter’s
now-extinguished sortie into a Ukraine energy empire? Does, “it is just the way
it is” sufficient explanation?
“Hunter Biden is only the latest in a
long line of relatives of elected leaders who appear to have used their names
to open doors. In recent decades, Presidents Nixon, Carter, Clinton and George
W. Bush all had troublesome family members… Which brings us to three other
children: Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump.
“Donald Jr. and Eric run the Trump Organization,
which their father still owns. They have promised to seek no new foreign deals
while he is president, but they are still building real estate projects that
were announced before his inauguration, and they say they will resume making
deals after he leaves office… Those self-imposed rules come with loopholes:
Donald Jr. has met with wealthy prospective buyers in Indonesia, India and
other countries since Trump took office.
“Ivanka Trump, officially an advisor
to the president, operated her fashion company for a year and a half after
entering the White House. She closed it in 2018, saying it had become a
distraction… Meanwhile, she collected dozens of trademark grants in China under
applications she filed before her father’s inauguration. In 2017, she received
three trademarks on the same day she and her father dined with Chinese
President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago.
“Anything illegal there? Not at all.
But would she have been able to chat up the leader of the world’s
second-largest economy if her father wasn’t president? Not a chance… Just as
with Hunter Biden, foreign governments and others see opportunities to curry
favor by doing financial favors for a high official’s family.
“On Sunday [9/29], Treasury Secretary
Steven T. Mnuchin explained what he thought was wrong about the Biden case… ‘What
I do find inappropriate is the fact that Vice President Biden’s son did very
significant business dealings in Ukraine,’ he said… Wouldn’t that restriction
cover Trump’s children?... Mnuchin fumbled. ‘I don’t want to get into more of
the details,’ he said, then insisted that the Trump deals ‘pre-dated his
presidency.’… Nonsense. If Trump’s kids get a pass for cashing in while their
dad sits in the Oval Office, Hunter Biden does too.” LA Times.
As the current impeachment inquiry points out,
crossing the lines to blemish an opponent and using the power of the entire US
government to further individual political gains are creating a constitutional
crisis. Donald Trump’s “the best defense is a good offense” tactic brought his
latest doubling down bravado on October 3rd: “‘China should start an investigation
into the Bidens,’ Trump said in remarks to reporters outside the White House.
Trump said he hadn’t directly asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to investigate
Biden and his son Hunter but said it’s ‘certainly something we could start
thinking about.’
“Trump and
personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani have also tried to raise suspicions about Hunter
Biden’s business dealings in China, leaning on the writings of conservative
author Peter Schweizer. But there is no evidence that the former vice president
benefited financially from his son’s business relationships… ‘I have a lot of
options on China, but if they don't do what we want, we have tremendous,
tremendous power,’ Trump said.
“He later
alleged without evidence that China had a ‘sweetheart deal’ on trade with the
U.S. because of the Bidens… ‘You know what they call that,’ Trump said. ‘They
call that a payoff.’… On Monday [9/30], Geng Shuang, a spokesman for China’s
Ministry of Foreign Affairs [also] called the allegation that Chinese
government business gave Biden’s son $1.5 billion ‘totally groundless.’”
Associated Press, October 3rd.
While no
one seriously believes the U.S. Senate would oust the President even if the
House impeaches, failure to create consequences for a rogue president willing
to use the political power of an entire nation for personal gain just might
unravel the republic. “It happens all the time” is not justification for the
practice… but it does.
It’s not as if any daddy-power has to
place a call for junior to get the gig or the deal. It’s just so obvious to the
economic party on the other side what the obvious advantages are to hire or
make a deal with a governmental power-broker’s child. But why are these
children burdened with their parent’s political realities? No one else’s child
faces those restrictions… or is accorded those de facto opportunities.
Disclosure may be a partial solution,
but also if there are any direct links between what that child is doing and any
economic ownership or control with powerful daddy (someday “mommy”), outright
banning could be appropriate as well. And if that child performs any
governmental function or is privy to any inside governmental information,
prohibition is equally in order. A remedy much like that imposed on the rest of
us for “insider trading” of stocks and bonds. The vile smell from Washington
continues to rise, and the rest of us get stuck with the consequences of the
obvious economic and political biases and “personal” benefits that result.
I’m
Peter Dekom, and while corruption, unfair advantage and politics have always
been overly friendly bedfellows, that does not mean we need to sit back and
helplessly accept the consequences.
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