September 27, 2019

The Hunter Biden Timeline

Scott Varley/Orange County Register via ZUMA

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Being sick has its advantages: I ended up watching a bunch of Fox News yesterday to find out what the Foxbot take on Ukrainegate is. Roughly speaking, it was: nothing to see here, the real scandal is Joe Biden.

I don’t feel like repeating all this nonsense, but it’s probably useful to provide the NYTbot take on Ukrainegate. That is to say, the consensus view of everyone who’s not a Trump water carrier. Here we go:

  • First off, Ukraine is a very corrupt country. This is the one thing that all sides agree on.
  • In particular, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General in 2016 was Viktor Shokin, a man so corrupt that both the IMF and pretty much every European country insisted he be removed if Ukraine wanted any assistance from the outside world.
  • At this time, Shokin was not investigating Burisma, the energy company on which Hunter Biden held a board seat. This is one of the (many) reasons he was considered corrupt.
  • Joe Biden later told the story of Shokin’s firing like this: “I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a bitch. He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.” Now, this might be a bit of Biden exaggeration, but it accurately describes the general attitude toward Shokin at the time.
  • A new Prosecutor General was appointed and immediately reopened the investigation into Burisma. In other words, by switching prosecutors Biden probably made things harder on his son, not easier.
  • The new prosecutor eventually reached a deal with Burisma. As with everything in Ukraine, it’s unclear if this was on the up-and-up, but in any case it happened after Trump had won election and Joe Biden no longer had any power or influence.
  • There has never been even a hint of evidence that Hunter Biden did anything wrong. He’s a Washington lobbyist who sits on various boards and had done a few small jobs for Burisma during the Obama administration. The head of Burisma at the time was trying to assemble an “all-star” board of directors and approached Hunter Biden. Was this an attempt to curry favor with the White House? I wouldn’t be surprised. But that has nothing to do with Hunter Biden’s work for Burisma, which he says was mostly about corporate governance.
  • The new prosecutor has stated many times that his investigation came up with absolutely nothing on Hunter Biden.
  • Likewise, there’s not a hint of evidence that Joe Biden ever did anything wrong.

So that’s the Biden side of the story. Your Foxbot friends will never hear any of this, so I figure it’s useful for you to have it all in one place. I assure you that there is no partisan slant to any of this. This is pure conventional wisdom, agreed to by virtually everyone outside the Trump orbit.

Next, of course, is the timeline for the shakedown of Ukraine over Trump’s desire for them to reopen the investigation into Hunter Biden yet again. We’ll do that some other time.

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This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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