A new chapter of Biden family corruption opened this week when the American people learned that, as the former vice president, Joe Biden illegally took classified information with him after leaving the White House. Making matters worse, he improperly handled classified information by storing it in an unsecured, private Washington, D.C., think tank office. He also kept a number of documents in his Wilmington, Delaware, garage. The timing of the revelations is infuriating. White House counsel knew about this behavior on November 2, 2022, just days before the midterm elections, and kept it from the American public for months. As the situation plays out, with Attorney General Merrick Garland appointing a special counsel to criminally investigate Biden, there is a major double standard at play.
In August 2022, President Donald Trump's personal residence, at Secret Service-protected Mar-a-Lago, was raided. Heavily armed FBI agents went through his office and overturned First Lady Melania Trump's closet. They also stopped by Barron Trump's room, making sure there wasn't classified information hiding in his gym shoes.
President Joe Biden's unsecured private office, which he used after his stint as vice president, has seen no such raid. Not to mention, Trump had declassification power as president. As vice president, Biden did not.
But given Biden's close business partnership with his son Hunter, the mishandling of classified information raises a number of red flags.
On September 20, 2017, Hunter Biden sent an email to a building manager asking for sets of keys to be made for "new office mates: Joe Biden, Jill Biden, Jim Biden," and "Gongwen Dong." Dong was a representative for CEFC Chinese Energy Company Chairman Ye Jianming.
The building manager happily obliged, writing in a response email, "Very excited and honored to welcome your new colleagues."
The keys were cut to the same private office where the classified information was stored unsecured, mishandled and accessible.
As Miranda Divine of the New York Post points out, that means Biden would "have been stashing these classified documents in an office he shared with the capitalist arm of the Chinese Communist Party's belt and road initiative, backed by CCP intelligence."
It was accessible not just to Biden family members who didn't have proper security clearances, but to the Chinese government.
Further, much of the classified information found at the office is reportedly about Ukraine. Throughout 2014, Hunter Biden served on the board of notoriously corrupt Ukrainian gas company Burisma at a rate of $80,000 per month.
Over in Delaware, where President Biden spends much of his time, there conveniently isn't a visitor log available to the American public or the press about who visits him at home. As for the garage, in 2018, Hunter Biden argued on background check paperwork that he was the owner of the house. In 2016, he had the engine of his father's corvette restored as a Christmas gift. The corvette was kept in the garage, right next to the classified information.
In other words, while Hunter Biden was selling influence as a business partner to his father, he had access to classified information. Further, Joe Biden's mishandling of classified information at his office gave a Chinese official access as well. Since Biden was vice president, Hunter has raked in millions of dollars from corrupt Ukrainian businesses and Chinese Communist Party-connected energy companies in Beijing. All on behalf of himself and the Biden family. President Biden still insists he has never spoken to his son about business. That is and always has been a lie. The fact that Hunter had access to classified information makes the situation much worse.
Lying to the American people about a business partnership with your son, one that involved getting rich by making shady deals with foreign adversaries and enemies of the United States, is bad enough. It's also deeply corrupt. But using classified information and selling out the country to do so is a crime. Some would say it rises to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors — an impeachable offense. Others call it treason.