The jigsaw puzzle put itself together. But the lack of curiosity when it comes to Joe Biden is par for the course.
NEW YORK POST
Ana Navarro whipped out the tiny violins on ABC’s “The View” this week, declaring that the Biden corruption scandal “is a story of a father’s love, and Joe Biden has never and will never give up on his son Hunter . . .
“That is part of his heart.”
The “View” co-host was simply echoing the spin from the White House to get out from under the latest avalanche of damning evidence about the Biden family grift machine during Joe’s vice presidency: Honest Joe is guilty of nothing more than loving his wayward son.
The New York Times’ Nick Kristof echoed the sentiment in a cringeworthy piece titled “The Real Lesson From the Hunter Biden Saga: It isn’t about presidential corruption but a determined parent battling his son’s addiction with unconditional love.”
But the allegations against the president and his family are too credible to be wiped away by a secondhand sob story.
Every defendant has a hard-luck tale and it’s a little much from a family that has been the epitome of privilege for decades when they don’t even try to provide an explanation.
Nor will Biden’s on-brand defiance fly this time.
The optics of his son and Joe’s brother Jim Biden — who still is under federal investigation — at the White House in bow ties for a state dinner last week was so in-your-face that even the Times raised an eyebrow.
It was just two days after Hunter’s sweetheart plea deal, and Attorney General Merrick Garland was preposterously in attendance.
Very funny, Joe!
Another ruse to downplay the ballooning allegations was evident when the president joked last week during a meeting with the Indian prime minister that he had “sold a lot of state secrets.”
What, me, worry?
That’s why he laughs in reporters’ faces when they dare to shout a snatched question as he hurries by.
But the questions keep coming, nonetheless.
“President Biden, how involved were you in your son’s Chinese shakedown text message?” he was asked as he emerged from the White House Wednesday morning.
The question from Post journalist Steven Nelson was about a WhatsApp message, subpoenaed by the FBI from Hunter’s iCloud, that IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley had given to the House Ways and Means Committee as part of his damning testimony about DOJ interference in the five-year tax investigation into Hunter.
In the July 30, 2017, message released last Friday, Hunter threatens a Chinese business partner who owes his family money that his father “and every person he knows” will retaliate unless their directions are obeyed: “I am sitting here with my father, and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled.”
Photographs on Hunter’s abandoned laptop place him at his father’s Delaware estate that Sunday.
So reporters have been asking the White House if Hunter was telling the truth; was his father in the room when he was shaking down an executive from Chinese energy company CEFC who would transfer $5.1 million to him over the next nine days?
It should not be a hard question to answer, one way or the other, but deflection, indignation and anger have been the only response.
