Raymond Arroyo: The evidence is now on the table
'Outnumbered' panelists weigh in after House Republicans announced findings in their investigation into Hunter Biden's business dealings.
The sheer magnitude of Biden family corruption uncovered by the House Oversight Committee can only be described as breathtaking. It is also deeply alarming. If the fruits of Chairman James Comer’s investigation are exactly what they appear to be, Joe Biden may have jeopardized our nation’s security by selling out America for cold hard cash.
Documents show that over $10 million in foreign money flowed like a river into more than 20 shell companies and LLCs created for the Bidens’ financial benefit, said Comer. Much of it was then surreptitiously shuffled around various accounts before it landed in the hands of nine members of the president’s family. Those companies have no apparent business purpose other than to serve as a receptacle for hiding cash derived from suspected influence peddling schemes overseas.
The incriminating evidence comes from thousands of subpoenaed banking records, wire transfers, and electronic transactions contained in more than 170 suspicious activity reports (SARs) that were flagged by banks and sent to the criminal division at the Treasury Department. The Biden administration refused to cough up those records until the Committee recently forced its hand. There are still more documents to be examined, suggesting that the Biden profiteering could far exceed the millions of dollars already tracked.
In Washington, where corruption and graft are endemic, the Bidens appear to have taken it to dizzying heights. While greed was the likely motive, concealment was the key to success. In just one deal alone more than a million dollars involved 16 different wire transfers ran through five different bank accounts before the funds eventually landed in Biden family hands. This and other transactions were well hidden "in a web of deception and corruption," noted committee member Rep. Byron Donalds. Cycling through this many companies serves no other purpose but to disguise illicit, if not illegal, payments, he concluded.
It has always been a misconception that these shady deals never occurred while Joe Biden was in office. The committee discovered that a stunning number of wire transfers happened when Biden served as vice president. It is no coincidence that the money sources came from the very countries over which the VP exerted control over foreign policy decisions. What was being bought? More to the point, what were the Bidens' selling? Access, as well as promises of future influence that would benefit America’s adversaries?
A partial answer may reside in a specific document Comer is seeking from the FBI. A "credible" whistleblower informed the committee that the unclassified record depicts a "criminal scheme" involving then-Vice President Biden and a foreign national in "the exchange of money for policy decisions."
President Biden and his son Hunter Biden attend the annual Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C., on April 10, 2023. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Biden’s repeated claims of innocence and his efforts at misdirection are belied by the known facts. He maintains that he knew nothing about his son’s nefarious activities. Yet, visitor logs prove that Hunter’s partners and clients visited his father at the White House more than 80 times when he was vice president.
Biden also insists that his family never took money from China. But the committee’s newly revealed records show that roughly $6 million was banked by the Bidens from just one of the copious deals with Beijing operatives who had close ties to the Chinese Communist Party and its intelligence apparatus. Citing the president’s soft China policies, Comer has drawn a nexus to Biden’s questionable handling of COVID, TikTok, the spy balloon, theft of intellectual property and China’s manipulation of U.S. currency. Perhaps this explains his utter indifference and no meaningful action to protect vital American interests.
The explosive new evidence seems to confirm what has long been suspected — Joe Biden and his family aggressively exploited his public office to confer benefits and favors on foreign entities or governments in exchange for money. If this was done to the detriment of our own interests as a nation — as it surely seems so — these schemes could well constitute a variety of crimes that include bribery, fraud and felony violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The use of multiple accounts to conceal cash activities would qualify as money laundering.
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Despite his lucrative overseas enterprises, Hunter Biden deliberately ignored the legal requirement that he register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). His own emails show that he intended to evade compliance. As former federal prosecutor and Fox News contributor Andrew C. McCarthy explained, such a failure would make his transactions illegal under the law.
Beyond the crimes identified under federal statutes, the actions of Joe Biden may rise to the level of an impeachable offense. The U.S. Constitution specifically states that a president can be removed for treason and bribery. Both would apply if the accusations against him are true and supported by credible evidence.
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This is exactly what our Founding Fathers feared the most. They worried that a future president might violate his sacred oath of office by secretly conspiring with malign foreign actors to betray our nation for self-enrichment.
The money trail uncovered so far is a damning indictment of corruption at the highest level of government — the current occupant of the White House.
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