The United States is unique among all nations, being founded on ideas and principals that maximized freedom for the people. In contrast, other countries trace their founding to blood lineage royalty, language, borders, the spoils of war and conquest, or repressive Marxist ideologies. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution provide not only the guidelines for freedom, but also the basis for legitimacy of the government coming directly from the people.
With freedom and openness of the American system, the framers of the Constitution recognized that corrupting influence from foreign powers was a real threat. They were particularly concerned about a corruptible American president. In his famous Farewell Address of 1796, George Washington issued a stern warning against the poisonous influence of foreign governments on the affairs of the new United States of America. He said, "Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence... the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government."
The Founders were idealists but also realists, and they recognized that people’s private ambitions and thirst for power or money were powerful motivators. They understood that the human condition was flawed, and that goodness of human nature could not be relied upon. So, they set up a system of checks and balances of power in the three branches of the legislative, the executive and the judiciary, and in a federal system of divided power between states and the federal government. They understood it was necessary to create these competing and redundant structures to guard against abuse of power and corruption. But they went even further.
The Constitution created two other safeguards against corruption in the impeachment powers of Article II, Section 4 and in the emoluments clause in Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the U.S. Constitution. The latter prohibits any person holding a government office from accepting any present, emolument, office, or title from any foreign state without congressional consent. The founders believed they had created comprehensive protection against corruption from foreign influence. Washington’s wisdom in his Farewell Address is as relevant today as it was 227 years ago when he wrote:
"The nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave… to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury… So, likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification."
The standard for impeachment as expressed in the Constitution is conviction of Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
The case for impeaching President Joe Biden goes beyond bribery and emolument high crimes related to Ukraine. In 2014, Hunter Biden introduced his father, then Vice President Joe Biden, to Kazakhstan oligarch Kenes Rakishev at a dinner. Records and testimony obtained by James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee show that at that time of introducing Rakishev to Vice President Biden, Hunter Biden and his business partner Devon Archer were working on a deal involving Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company on whose board they both served, and a Chinese company that would have been based in Kazakhstan. To facilitate the deal and his relationship with Archer and the Bidens, Rakishev wired $142,300 to Rosemont Seneca—a shell company created by Devon and Hunter (the exact amount needed to fund Hunter's sports car purchase the next day).
There was also another mysterious payment to the Bidens: $3.5 million was wired into Rosemont Seneca in February 2014 by the powerful Russian oligarch Yelena Baturina, right around the time Joe Biden had first met her over dinner.
Joe Biden’s questionable activities go back to his first year as Vice President in 2009 and continued throughout his eight years, punctuated with son Hunter becoming and being paid $1 million a year as a board member of the Ukrainian company Burisma in 2014. That role continued for more than four years, with a large $10 million dollar payoff from Burisma coming to Hunter and Joe Biden after the latter blackmailed Ukraine by threatening the withholding of $1 billion in U.S. aid unless prosecutor general Victor Shokin was fired from the corruption investigation of Burisma in March of 2016—an investigation that could have exposed questionable payments to Hunter Biden. FBI documents refer to the two $5 million payments to Hunter and Joe Biden as a 'bribe' paid by Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky.
Payments to the Bidens from oligarchs from Ukraine and other countries in the region suggest impeachment is justified. But when the scope and detail of the Biden family's business dealings in China is understood, the case for impeachment becomes urgent.
China engages in unrestricted warfare against the United States, something that the founders could hardly fathom. Blackmail was not a term with any usage, having first been coined in Scotland in the 17th century. However, blackmail is one of the chief tools in China’s massive elite capture program in the United States, giving them control over many elites in the United States—with the top elite family in the U.S. being President Joe Biden’s family. Preliminary records assembled in 2021 and 2022 without subpoena power or access to bank records show that the Chinese elite have paid some $31 million to the Biden family. And for the Chinese these payments are all about control and blackmail, which may explain why Biden more than any other U.S. president has pursued policies that have weakened the United States and helped China.
Bring on impeachment and let the hearings on the Bidens’ involvement in China begin.
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Scott Powell is senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and a member of the Committee on the Present Danger-China. His timeless book, Rediscovering America, was #1 new release in history for eight straight weeks (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1637581599). Reach him at scottp@discovery.org