Barr Worked to Keep Hunter Biden Probes From Public View During Election

One investigation became public this week after federal investigators served a subpoena on Hunter Biden. The subpoena sought detailed financial information in connection with a criminal tax investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware, according to people familiar with the matter.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan had also been looking at Hunter Biden’s business and financial dealings, as part of a broader criminal investigation that two people familiar with the matter described as an international financial investigation that had been going on for at least a year. Hunter Biden is implicated in that investigation but was never a specific target for criminal prosecution, the people said. They declined to provide details on the substance of the probe.

The federal scrutiny dates back to 2018, the people familiar with the matter said.

Neither the Delaware nor the Manhattan investigation implicates President-elect Biden, according to people familiar with the matter.

Hunter Biden said in a statement Wednesday that his lawyer advised him about the investigation into his “tax affairs” and said he had acted legally and appropriately. His lawyer, George Mesires, didn’t respond to questions on Thursday.

The Biden transition team has declined to say when Joe Biden learned of the investigation. A statement circulated by that team on Wednesday said President-elect Biden is “proud of his son, who has fought through difficult challenges, including the vicious personal attacks of recent months, only to emerge stronger.”

While the investigations in Delaware and Manhattan proceeded, investigators tried to keep the cases out of public view by taking few visible steps in the weeks before the November election, recognizing the impact their work could have, said one of the people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Barr was aware of the investigations involving Hunter Biden before the spring, the person said, though it isn’t clear when or how he first learned of the inquiries.

Mr. Trump has fumed about Mr. Barr for a number of reasons including his acknowledgment last week that the Justice Department hadn’t found widespread evidence of election fraud that would reverse Mr. Biden’s victory.

On Thursday night, Mr. Trump tweeted his frustration about the Justice Department and the FBI’s failure to disclose the Hunter Biden investigation earlier. “Why didn’t the Fake News Media, the FBI and the DOJ report the Biden matter BEFORE the Election,” he wrote.

Justice Department guidelines advise investigators against taking overt actions in a run-up to an election so as not to be seen as affecting the outcome.

Mr. Trump talked of involving Mr. Barr when he urged the president of Ukraine in a July 2019 phone call to announce an investigation into Joe Biden and his son. Mr. Trump said he would direct his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and Mr. Barr to contact the Ukrainian president. The Justice Department said Mr. Trump never asked Mr. Barr to contact the Ukrainians. The request ultimately led to Mr. Trump’s impeachment by the House.

Appeals from Republicans to investigate Hunter Biden stepped up in the weeks leading up to the election. After a Republican Senate investigation in September produced a report on Hunter Biden’s finances and overseas business interests, several Republican lawmakers demanded that the Justice Department investigate. Rep. Jim Jordan (R, Ohio), for example, the ranking member of the House Judiciary panel, wrote to Federal Bureau of Investigation director Christopher Wray asking what steps the FBI had taken to investigate the information in the “explosive report.”

An FBI spokeswoman said the bureau responded to the letter and declined to comment further.

On Oct. 19, Mr. Trump’s Republican allies in Congress urged Mr. Barr to appoint a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden and his father, and demanded that Mr. Barr respond within five days.

A day later, asked on Fox News whether he supported tapping a special prosecutor , Mr. Trump said: “We’ve got to get the attorney general to act. He’s got to act, and he’s got to act fast. He’s got to appoint somebody. This is major corruption and this has to be known about before the election.”

The tax investigation into Hunter Biden was sparked in part by reports of suspicious activity filed by a bank that handled foreign transactions related to him, a person familiar with the matter said.

Mr. Biden, a lawyer, has had various sources of income from the U.S. and overseas. In addition to legal work in recent years, he has been a partner in some U.S.-based investment companies.

His earnings from work outside the U.S. included a board seat for around five years until April 2019 at Ukraine gas company Burisma Holdings, where he was paid roughly $50,000 a month for his work.

Mr. Biden also did advisory work for China CEFC Energy Co., as the company pursued deals in Europe and the Middle East, and in 2017 he was a shareholder in a venture with that Chinese company as it sought a foothold in the U.S. While the joint venture never got off the ground, the Senate Republican report in September alleged an entity linked to CEFC paid Mr. Biden’s law firm millions of dollars for legal and advisory work.

Around the time CEFC was trying to break into the U.S., its activity became a focus of a corruption case brought by the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, which resulted in the 2018 conviction of a former Hong Kong official on charges that he bribed African officials to secure business benefits for CEFC. The company, which is now effectively defunct, wasn’t charged in the U.S. corruption case.

Mr. Biden is also a 10% shareholder in a Shanghai private-equity firm and earlier sat on its board, though the board position was unpaid and he is among investors who haven’t recouped their investment, say people with knowledge of the situation. His investment was $420,000 for 10% of the firm, which owns stakes in several companies, most in China.

“That’s all the Republican senate would allow him to have”

Another false meme. Trump chose Sessions because Sessions supported him early in the campaign. Clearly Trump did not think it through.

Trump could have named anyone he wanted to the job both times it was open. If he truly didn’t put his own person in the job because McConnell told him his nominee wouldn’t pass, he had another path open to him. He could have nominated his own candidate. If the RINO’s in the Senate started making noise he could have gone to the people.

The truth is Trump made many bad appointments - Tillerson, Mattis, Priebus, Kelly, Esper and many more. Few if any were made because it was the best he could get by the Senate.

Consider this. If he had nominate Amy Coney Barrett for Attorney General, do you really believe the Republican Senate would have failed to confirm her? She would almost certainly have been better than Sessions or Barr. There have to be honest conservative politician attorneys or judges he could have appointed and would have passed the Senate. The fact is, he did not try.

An executive cannot lead an organization by himself. If he doesn’t hire a good team of senior leaders, committed to the cause, under him he will be crippled. Trump could have been an even better president if he had done the hard work of recruiting and vetting outstanding people to work for him in the administration.

I agree that PDJT made many poor appointments. I give him a pass only on Sessions, without whose support Trump would probably not have been elected. Rosenstein, who I consider Trump's worst appointment, on the other hand, should have been vetted even on Wikipedia and known to be a swamp creature.

I do think that many people who would have made wonderful appointees in the Trump administration declined the offer because they knew that the ruthless Dems would put them and their entire family through the ringer. Dems stop at nothing to get their way and do not care who they ruin.

I am not sure that we can even do Swedish “socialism” for very long. We may have too many people unwilling to work, even more than we have already, who will be happy to have everything given to them. Sweden, by the way, denies that it is a socialist country. They say that they are a free market country with very high taxes.

> Sweden, by the way, denies that it is a socialist country. They say that they are a free market country with very high taxes. <

Yes, I have read that. But as you might agree, very high taxes accomplish exactly what Karl Marx was striving for:

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

The main problem Trump had, was a Republican establishment that never supported him.

Barrett would make a great Chief Justice, but a terrible AG.
She’s a woman, who as AG would accommodate the liberals who run the DOJ.

The answer to our DOJ problem is to defund it. Eliminate 90% of their budget.

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