Hunter Biden should testify before Congress about his cozy job at Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company where he was making $50,000/month sitting on its board. He assumed that position when his father, Vice President Joe Biden, was in office and was spearheading anti-corruption efforts. One of the allegations lobbed about this arrangement is that it presented a conflict of interest and that Hunter was used to sell access to top Obama officials. This deal is what Trump allegedly wanted the Ukrainians to investigate or risk having military aid withheld. Aid was not withheld—and much of this allegation is grounded in hearsay. Still, House Democrats are weaponizing it to try and impeach Trump. It’s been a circus of a week, but there is another area of suspicion that has arisen from Hunter’s web on financial dealings. A finance firm he’s linked to benefited from a federal bailout program, his daddy, Joe, was promoting. I mean is it shocking that being the son of a VP could land you some $130 million in loans. The Washington Examiner has more:
An investment firm linked to Hunter Biden received over $130 million in federal bailout loans while his father Joe Biden was vice president and routed profits through a subsidiary in the Cayman Islands, according to federal banking and corporate records reviewed by the Washington Examiner.
Financial experts said the offshore corporate structure could have been used to shield earnings from U.S. taxes.
Rosemont Capital, an investment firm at the center of Hunter Biden’s much-scrutinized financial network, was one of the companies approved to participate in the 2009 federal loan program known as the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TALF.
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According to federal records, 177 firms participated in TALF, many of them well connected in Washington or on Wall Street. For investors, there was little risk and a high chance of reward. The Federal Reserve funded as much as 90% of the investments. If the bonds were profitable, the borrowers benefited. If not, the department agreed to take over the depreciated assets with no repercussions for the borrowers.
[…]
Joe Biden was a key advocate for the financial bailout, which was approved under the Bush administration and expanded under President Barack Obama. He delayed his Senate resignation in January 2009 to cast his final vote to increase funding for the Troubled Asset Relief Program before taking office as vice president.
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“This is a great example of the suspicion of many Americans that these bailouts were used to benefit connected insiders while ordinary Americans went broke,” said Tom Anderson, director of the Government Integrity Project at the National Legal and Policy Center, an organization that was critical of TALF at the time.
Although the government stopped issuing the loans at the end of 2009, the names of the well connected borrowers and investors were later released — prompting new criticism from lawmakers and the press. In April 2011, Rolling Stone reported that millions in TALF loans had been issued to the wife of Morgan Stanley Chairman John Mack, Miami Dolphins owner H. Wayne Huizenga, and Wall Street titan John Paulson, dubbing the program “welfare for the rich.”
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And people wonder why Trump was elected on a more populist message, why “drain the swamp” is popular, and why Washington D.C. and its inhabitants are so hated. This is pretty swampy stuff. This is grade-A ammunition that could be used against the VP and given his serial gaffes, his sluggish counterattacks, and inability to truly break from the 2020 pack, it could be yet another instance where his son is crippling his presidential bid. Over at HotAir, Ed notes that if Democrats pass up on using this, Trump will definitely seize on it, once again providing him with a long-time fixture of Washington and someone who was the father of a “welfare for the rich” scheme. Hillary Clinton was that in 2016, but at least she was capable of delivering counterattacks. In the last Democratic debate, Joe seemed to forget the President of China’s name and tried to say he was just as black as Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), another 2020 candidate because he has voter support in that community. Joe just joined Warren in the cultural appropriation Olympics—and that’s no solid ground to defend the many, many issues plaguing this campaign. They’re still not out of the woods on the Ukraine-Burisma deal.
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