With support for Biden fading, and the corruption case building, will he quit the presidential race?
"I have decided that I will no longer be a candidate for president in the 2024 election."
Most Democrats and the vast majority of voters overall hope that Joe Biden will utter those words sometime before the party’s national convention, which convenes in Chicago next August.
It could happen. More importantly, it should happen.
President Biden speaks after exiting a meeting with the Senate Democratic Caucus in Washington, on Jan. 13, 2022. (Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Polls show that Biden is deeply unpopular. Beyond serious concerns about his advanced age and diminished mental acuity, his job performance on every major policy issue that Americans care about is a dismal report card of inept management or misjudgment.
HUNTER BIDEN CRIMINAL CASE EXPOSES JOURNALISTS WHO ‘LIE LIKE HELL’
But there’s another reason why President Biden is politically destitute. Many Americans have come to realize that he is corrupt and dishonest.
There is compelling evidence that Biden actively aided and abetted the illicit, if not illegal, schemes operated by his son that netted tens of millions of dollars from foreign interests while selling access and promises of influence when the elder Biden was vice president.
Uncovered documents and testimony from witnesses implicate Joe as a complicit actor in Hunter Biden’s prodigious scams and grifts. Despite his repeated denials of involvement, records show that the then-VP met personally with his son’s overseas partners, spoke by phone with Hunter’s clients more than 20 times, and attended closely guarded meetings.
Together, they rode aboard Air Force Two to overseas destinations where they met privately with monied sources. In one highly lucrative Chinese deal, Joe was slated to receive a handsome 10% cut for "the Big guy." Some of the money from Beijing –exactly 10% – eventually landed in his personal bank account, although he maintains that it was merely a "loan repayment." What it was allegedly for is not nearly as significant as where it came from.
What cannot be overlooked or innocuously explained is the notorious Burisma scandal in Ukraine. It has all the earmarks of a classic quid pro quo – conferring a benefit in exchange for millions of dollars lavished on his son.
JOHNSON DEFENDS VOTE TO FORMALIZE BIDEN IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY AMID WHITE HOUSE ‘IMPASSE’: ‘WE HAVE NO CHOICE’
Exploiting a public office to enrich your family or others is both a criminal offense and an impeachable one. Armed with damning evidence of suspected corruption and abuse of power, the full House of Representatives has now formalized its impeachment inquiry.
The investigating committee has meticulously followed the money: some $24 million flowing into a complex web of more than 20 shell companies controlled in the shadows by Hunter Biden. Disguising or cleansing the original source of cash smacks of money laundering. Some of the purported payola was channeled to Biden family members who seemingly did nothing to receive it.
Whenever a public official is involved in such schemes, it’s called profiteering and self-enrichment. Even if the payout did not go directly to Joe, it is still a crime under 18 USC 201, as well as controlling court cases that have applied the statute in past prosecutions of officeholders who slyly diverted the cash elsewhere.
Under well-established impeachment standards, it’s called something else – "misuse of public office for financial gain." This is precisely what our Founders sought to prevent when they crafted the impeachment clause in our Constitution. They feared a future greedy president who might forsake America by selling out to the highest foreign bidders and thereby jeopardize our national security.
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Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and a key member of the impeachment inquiry, offered a scathing assessment of the evidence when he stated, "There is no doubt in my mind that Joe Biden is the most corrupt and compromised president in the history of this country."
Democrats and their media allies keep insisting that there is "no evidence of Joe Biden’s involvement" in his son’s scams. They misunderstand what evidence is.
Facts and information constitute evidence. Period. They are often documentary and testimonial – direct and/or circumstantial. Whether those facts eventually rise to the level of criminality is a matter of proof. But they are still "evidence," regardless of how hard Biden’s apologists try to refute it.
For the mainstream media to deny that volumes of incriminating evidence exist in the ongoing Biden probe is to engage in willful blindness. Or blatant lies.
The purpose of an impeachment inquiry is to collect, scrutinize and interpret the very kind of evidence I’ve just described. That evidence is then compared to the law and the Constitution. Biden confederates seem oblivious to this fundamental process.
STATE OF THE RACE: HOW HOUSE REPUBLICAN IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY COULD IMPACT BIDEN IN 2024 ELECTION
As incriminating material continues to emerge – as it inevitably will – even those who have long defended and excused Joe Biden’s ostensible corruption and incompetence may come to accept that his presidency has been a calamity that will grow exponentially as the presidential election draws near. Democrats need a more viable candidate. Biden is the antithesis.
The recent indictments of Hunter Biden on two sets of criminal charges may be the inflection point that dramatically alters the electoral equation for the sitting president. Stories have emerged in the press that the elder Biden is deeply worried about his son and the legal quagmire Hunter now faces in the cases that his father’s own Department of Justice was compelled to bring. Convictions and prison terms are looming large for his embattled son.
Hunter managed to make matters worse when he held a splashy press conference to brazenly defy a legally valid subpoena to appear for his deposition before the impeachment committee. His arrogance all but invites an additional charge of criminal contempt that his dad’s DOJ may be forced to prosecute.
All of this is an unmitigated mess of the Bidens’ own making. They have only themselves to blame. Their foreign hustles driven by pure avarice are a treacherous betrayal of the public’s trust. This makes an already unpopular Joe Biden a gravely tainted candidate for Democrats. Increasingly, voters see him as a dirty politician. Roughly 70% believe he acted either illegally or unethically.
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Don’t be surprised if prominent party members and wealthy donors quietly commence a private campaign of lobbying Joe’s family to convince him that his re-election bid is doomed. Behind closed doors, they’ll cite descending poll numbers that reflect the nation’s collective opinion that Biden is too old and decrepit to serve another term and that he’ll only drag down other Democrats with him on Nov. 5.
There is a fair chance that Joe is still capable of reading the writing on the wall. Or willing to capitulate to the wishes of his family and party elders. If he bows out, he won’t cite his pervasive unpopularity as the real reason. Nor will he acknowledge any wrongdoing in the corruption scandal that has enveloped his presidency.
Instead, he will embrace the mantle of victimhood by blaming those evil "MAGA Republicans" for engineering the criminal prosecutions of Hunter, demonizing the son he remains "proud of," and citing general concerns over the welfare of his family for his decision to abandon re-election.
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Beyond staving off potential impeachment, withdrawal offers another advantage for the beleaguered president. Dropping out incentivizes Biden to pardon his son of all federal charges. While doing so before the election would risk extreme political fallout for his party, Joe could simply wait until after the contest is decided, but before he departs office in January 2025, to issue a full pardon.
One thing is certain. If the president quits the race, there will be no mea culpa or honest accountability. It’ll be more of the same blame-game deceit that is a hallmark of the Joe Biden era.
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