Ho hum, just another day in Washington’s vast career-politician-industrial complex. If one ever wondered how family members of Beltway barnacles get so wealthy, this primer from Peter Schweitzer and Seamus Bruner at Breitbart will provide a reminder. E-mails culled from Hunter Biden’s business associates — from an entirely different source than Rudy Giuliani and the purported Hunter hard drive — show the way money gets attracted to people with familial connections to power. Or, to use the words of Hunter’s associates, attracted to Hunter’s “direct administration pipeline.”

This lacks the New York Post‘s alleged “smoking gun” involving Joe Biden, but it’s still clear why people kept giving Hunter money. They wanted to buy influence, or at the very least the appearance of it:

Hunter Biden’s business associates spoke candidly in emails about Hunter Biden’s role in the business, particularly as it related to foreign ventures, apparently viewing the Biden name as a form of “currency,” and bragging that they had a “direct…pipeline” to the Obama-Biden Administration.

In another email, Hunter Biden’s associates touted Hunter’s access to the White House and contrasted his willingness to “take on risk” with that of Chris Heinz—then-Secretary of State John Kerry’s stepson and a close friend of Biden and Archer—who was uncomfortable with some of their potential partnerships. …

In an email on November 4, 2014, Biden’s business associate Jason Galanis discussed a draft pitch that he was preparing for possible investors. Galanis explained that the presentation would cover boilerplate issues like investor protections. But Galanis also sought to emphasize their connections to the White House, specifically Vice President Joe Biden: “I wanted to focus on the ‘other currency’ we are bringing to the table…direct administration pipeline.” Galanis also mentioned dropping Joe Biden’s connections in their pitch when dealing with union pension funds. Galanis wrote, “maybe we should also remind of HB’s dad’s union relationships to justify the ask??”

Hunter wasn’t the only Biden family member to profit off this “direct administration pipeline” and its union implications, either:

In a March 2015 draft investor pitch, Biden’s associates wrote about the need to “leverage Hunter Biden Taft Hartley network.” Taft Hartley is the law governing union pension funds, and Joe Biden has a long-established history of close relationships with union bosses, which Hunter Biden and Joe’s brother James Biden have reportedly sought to capitalize on in the past. The presentation noted that the team “led by Archer and Biden” would create “unprecedented opportunity for a firm at our scale,” and referenced tapping finances from Chinese officials. In December 2013, as has been widely reported, Biden and Archer secured a $1 billion private equity deal financed by the Chinese government. Biden and his associates wanted to go back for even more Chinese money.

Schweitzer and Bruner have more examples that show just how sleazy these family connections can get. What it lacks, at least thus far, is an actual corrupt act by Joe Biden himself. The NY Post story had that as its hook — an e-mail which allegedly confirms that Biden himself lied about being involved in Hunter’s work at Burisma, before his intervention in an official VP capacity to demand the removal of Ukraine’s chief prosecutor. Thus far, that e-mail has not yet been authenticated, but the Biden camp isn’t claiming that it’s fake, either.

All this smoke does lead one to wonder just how much of a fire there actually was, however. Hunter scored massive deals by trading off access to his father. If that didn’t actually deliver results, how long could that sales pitch work? At some point the investors would either have access to Joe or they would take their money elsewhere, especially those investors from China’s state-controlled companies. Did they pack up and leave? Or did Hunter and his associates deliver on their “direct administration pipeline”? Perhaps the FBI already knows the answer to that question.