Perhaps we’ve been reading this entire Hunter Biden laptop story totally wrong. All of his various business dealings in China and Ukraine or with Burisma may have been on the up and up all along and we’re just unfairly judging him and his family. After all, Russian President and former KGB henchman Vladimir Putin doesn’t see anything wrong with Hunter’s wheeling and dealing. And if Big Vlad is okay with it, how bad could it really be? Why Putin decided to weigh in on this particular subject remains something of a mystery, but he’s found at least one reporter at Reuters who was happy to report on his comments and attempt to throw more cold water on the story.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday that he saw nothing criminal in Hunter Biden’s past business ties with Ukraine or Russia, marking out his disagreement with one of Donald Trump’s attack lines in the U.S. presidential election.
Putin was responding to comments made by Trump during televised debates with Democratic challenger Joe Biden ahead of the Nov. 3 election.
Trump, who is trailing in opinion polls, has used the debates to make accusations that Biden and his son Hunter engaged in unethical practices in Ukraine. No evidence has been verified to support the allegations, and Joe Biden has called them false and discredited.
I’ll pause for a moment here to note that way that Reuters is treating the laptop story, along the same lines as nearly all mainstream media outlets. They casually toss out the phrase “no evidence has been verified to support the allegations.”
Oh, really? Multiple people who were copied on the emails have come forward to confirm that they are real. The CEO of Hunter’s own company has verified their authenticity. And neither of the Bidens have ever claimed that the emails were fake, despite having had plenty of opportunities to do so. Precisely how much more “verification” do you need?
Getting back to the main topic, this incident might make us wonder precisely how much election meddling the Russian president is really interested in launching. He has always seemed to have a fairly good opinion of Donald Trump and in the same comments he noted Joe Biden’s “sharp anti-Russian rhetoric”. So why bother vouching for Hunter Biden’s claim if he’s all that interested in seeing Trump win a second term? I suppose it’s possible that he’s just trying to improve his relationship with Joe Biden in case he wins.
Of course, getting an endorsement from Vladimir Putin over a question of corruption might go a long way. After all, the guy is pretty much the world’s leading authority on the subject. Analysts have suspected for years that Putin may actually be the planet’s first trillionaire after lining his pockets with illicit cash for as long as he’s been in power.
It really wasn’t all that much of an endorsement, by the way. Putin went on to say that he wasn’t even sure if Hunter Biden still had a company operating in Ukraine. He also noted that it “doesn’t concern” the Russians. But if the younger Biden “made good money” he didn’t see anything wrong with that. I would imagine not. Putin is more of a kleptocrat than a capitalist, but he certainly knows a thing or two about “making good money.”
