Joe Biden has said for years that he did not talk with his son Hunter about "his" business. As we've shown with a boatload of evidence over the years, that was not true. Democrats and some in the media like to play this "there's no evidence game." Except, of course, for the emails, texts, phone calls, meetings, and witness statements that all relate to or involve Joe.
Democrats are having trouble dealing with the evidence that has already come out, as we noted. They sent out a "talking points" memo to the media on Wednesday, calling on them to "ramp up the scrutiny" against the Republicans over the impeachment inquiry and act like there isn't any evidence.
But now there's another shady allegation about Joe Biden that the Democrats are going to have to struggle to explain away.
House investigators are now looking into a meeting that Joe Biden had at the vice-presidential residence on July 7, 2015, with Marc Holtzman, who was the chairman of Kazakhstan’s largest bank, Kazkommertsbank. Both Hunter Biden and Devon Archer were in attendance at the meeting.
Over orange juice, coffee, and pastries in a downstairs room of the historic Naval Observatory residence on that sunny Tuesday morning, conversation revolved around Holtzman lobbying VP Biden to back his close friend, then-Kazakhstan Prime Minister Karim Massimov, to be Secretary-General of the United Nations.
The unspoken subtext of the conversation between the four men was that Hunter and Archer were working on a lucrative energy project in Kazakhstan on behalf of Burisma, the corrupt Ukrainian energy company that was paying them $1 million apiece.
With Massimov’s backing they would create a potentially lucrative new Kazakhstani subsidiary, Burisma Eurasia, and bring American drilling equipment overland through Russia to exploit the gas deposits.
Helping Holtzman get a favor for Massimov in return was the purpose of the breakfast, and Jill Biden stopped by their table at one point to say hello, says a source familiar with the discussion.
So why are Hunter and Archer there except to benefit Burisma by providing a "favor" from Joe for Holzman? It's hard to argue any other rational interpretation of this meeting. And Archer made it clear.
Archer said that Burisma was trying to expand its businesses into the former Soviet republic, “so I leveraged the relationship [with Massimov] to introduce him to the company — the country and new equipment and technology and clean drilling.”
According to the source, Biden told Holtzman Massimov might have a tough time getting the job since Kazakhstan was seen as being aligned with Russia, but he said he would bring it up to Barack Obama. It's not clear if he did. Massimov didn't get the job. Instead, he's serving time in his country for abuse of power. That's the kind of guy that the Bidens were dealing with. Massimov was also part of the two dinners at the Cafe Milano which Joe attended.
Hunter's laptop showed the meeting as well as another meeting later in the day with "dad, Steve Ricchetti, Mike Donilon, and former Sen. Ted Kaufman." Those are some of Joe Biden's top advisers. The laptop also showed a "Thank you" email from Holtzman.
“Dear Hunter, I can’t begin to thank you for yesterday,” Holtzman wrote on July 8. “Most of all and as I said to Devon, I look forward to deepening our friendship and to working more closely together. Sincerely, Marc.”
This is everything the Biden team has been denying, caught all in one meeting. Can we talk about influence peddling now? And more and more stuff like this is likely to come out since favors and deals were a big part of the operation.