Just how well did Biden Inc do during Joe Biden’s vice-presidency? As an influence-peddling operation, extraordinarily well, according to new allegations from the House Oversight Committee. And you might know this if you managed to find any media coverage of chair James Comer’s press briefing this morning:

Regime media on display today. Biden isn't just old, addled, confused, and incapable of discharging his duties of office. He's also the aging head of an international crime family, but because he's a Democrat, zero media interest. It's disgusting. https://t.co/ILFR8olnMc

— Duane Patterson (@Radioblogger) May 10, 2023

That’s too bad, because James Comer’s warning to the Department of Justice on Monday appears justified now. Using banking and corporate records, House Oversight has tracked payments through nearly two dozen shell LLCs to demonstrate that at least $10 million flowed from foreign interests into the hands of the Bidens while Joe was vice-president. And Hunter was the nexus through which the money flowed (video link via Power Line):

The Biden family and its business associates created a complicated web of more than 20 companies, according to bank records obtained by the House Oversight Committee — a system GOP lawmakers say was meant to conceal money received from foreign nationals.

Sixteen of the companies were limited liability companies formed during Joe Biden’s tenure as vice president, the committee said in a press conference on Wednesday. The Biden family, their business associates, and their companies received more than $10 million from foreign nationals’ and their related companies, the records show. These payments occurred both while Biden was in office as vice president and after his time in office ended.

In what Representative Nancy Mace called an act of “financial gymnastics,” many payments were routed from foreign companies to the Biden family’s business associates’ companies which then doled out payments to the Bidens in incremental payments to different bank accounts in an alleged attempt to hide the source of the funds.

At least nine Biden family members received payments, according to committee chairman James Comer. That includes Hunter Biden; James Biden; James Biden’s wife, Sara Jones Biden; the late Beau Biden’s wife, Hallie Biden; Hunter Biden’s ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle; Hunter Biden’s wife, Melissa Cohen; and “three children of the president’s son and the president’s brother.”

For what did the Biden shell companies get all this cash? The Bidens don’t produce anything — not “widgets,” as Duane argued on Twitter, not pillows, not bad light beer … nothing at all. What were all these foreign interests buying with $10 million that Oversight has managed to track, and what exactly did the Biden give them in exchange?

And if you suggest that there might be some legitimate product or service sold, then why did the money get filtered through a labyrinth of LLCs?

What services did the Bidens provide in exchange for this money?
 
It is unclear what they provided other than access and influence.

— Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) May 10, 2023

Multiple Biden family members received money from the Chinese after it passed through an associate’s account. Additionally, Hunter Biden received money directly into his company’s account from a Chinese-controlled entity. pic.twitter.com/CEyPZGW8gA

— Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) May 10, 2023

And it wasn’t just China, either. Comer released data on the Bidens’ connection to  a corrupt Romanian oligarch which resulted in a $3 million payout. That got split between multiple Bidens as part of an ongoing pattern of what looks like a well-oiled money-laundering scheme:

In a 36-page memo, the committee cites subpoenaed bank records to describe how $3 million was allegedly transferred from Gabriel Popoviciu’s Bladon Enterprises Limited to Robinson Walker LLC — controlled by Hunter’s business partner Rob Walker — between November 2015 and May 2017.

Of the $3 million, the memo says, roughly one-third — $1,038,627.08 — was transferred to bank accounts belonging to Hunter Biden, first daughter-in-law Hallie Biden and an unnamed Biden family member. The procedure mirrors a similar division of a roughly $3 million haul in early 2017 from Chinese firm CEFC China Energy. About a third of that amount was shared among Hunter, Hallie, first brother James Biden and a fourth, unidentified Biden, according to an Oversight Committee memo from March. …

“The Romanian transactions show evidence of influence peddling and a correlation between Biden family and their business associates’ work and then Vice President Biden’s responsibilities while in office,” the new memo says.

Jonathan Turley doesn’t believe in coincidences either:

…During this period, Biden in May 2014 was speaking about corruption in Romania. In Sept. 2015, Biden welcomed the Romanian president to Washington. Five weeks later, money flowed to Biden associates through multiple accounts. Haley Biden received some of this money.

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) May 10, 2023

Yes, Biden’s lecturing of Romania on corruption and ethics lends an ironic and deeply cynical twist to this story. “Corruption is a cancer, a cancer that eats away at a citizen’s faith in democracy, diminishes the instinct for innovation and creativity; already-tight national budgets, crowding out important national investments,” Biden said in a speech in Romania in May 2014. “It wastes the talent of entire generations. It scares away investments and jobs. And most importantly it denies the people their dignity. It saps the collective strength and resolve of a nation. Corruption is just another form of tyranny.”

No kidding.

This point brings us back to the absence of media coverage of today’s event. Maybe the Washington Post is right — democracy really does die in darkness. Our national media looooove to pose as the arbiters of accountability when it comes to those in power, but in practice they’re more the arbitrary arbiters. And not even all that arbitrary; they’ve been covering for the Bidens since the Hunter laptop story, and are still covering for them to this very day — as today’s coverage of this report shows.

Corruption is just another form of tyranny, and the Bidens and the media are partners in oligarchy and the demolition of accountability for its elites.