Biden family most corrupt in history: claim Republicans

GOP reps plan to question Twitter executives over the suppression during the 2020 election of data from Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Hunter Biden with son Beau and wife Melissa Cohen disembark from Marine One upon arrival on the South Lawn of the White House at the weekend. Picture: AFP

The Republicans plan to question three Twitter executives in congress over the suppression during the 2020 US election of data from a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, as part of a wider inquiry into alleged collusion between Big Tech, the Democrats, the media and the FBI.

Emails from the computer point to Joe Biden’s involvement in his son’s business affairs, critics say, including while he was vice-president.

When the Republicans take over the House of Representatives and its committees in January they will try to show that the “deep state” worked to suppress damaging headlines arising from the laptop’s contents until after the election.

Their plans to investigate the President’s wayward son have been given new impetus by Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter. He released details of internal ­deliberations at the company on suppressing a story about the laptop in the New York Post in October 2020, and has promised more revelations.

The affair led Donald Trump to call for the “termination” of parts of the US constitution so he could be installed as president or the election could be rerun.

The Democrats reject the ­suggestion of a deep-state ­conspiracy to protect Mr Biden but their opponents say the ultimate aim was to cover up the family’s use of Joe Biden’s name and influence to earn millions of ­dollars in shady deals around the world; the clearest example being Hunter Biden’s $US1m-a-year appointment in May 2014 to the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company.

“There’s nothing like it in the history of America. We’ve never had a family that has influence-peddled to this degree,” James Comer, the Republican congressman who will chair the House oversight committee, told Fox News.

“The evidence is based a lot, in part, with what the documents are and the data is on the laptop. So, based on the internal documents that Elon Musk released this weekend, the oversight committee will be sending a letter to the three Twitter employees … implicated in the cover-up of the laptop story, requesting their presence in front of the committee in January.”

The three are Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of safety and ­integrity; Vijaya Gadde, former head executive for public policy and trust and safety; and James Baker, deputy general counsel who earlier spent four years as the FBI’s top lawyer. Mr Comer added: “What we’re going to ask them is, who was influencing your decision-making? Did you do this based on what you were told from the Biden campaign … or, even worse, from the FBI?”

The senior executives decided to block sharing on Twitter of the New York Post story of October 14, 2020, which, under the headline “Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad”, revealed an email to Hunter Biden from Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Burisma. Written on April 17, 2015, the misspelt mail said: “Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent some time together. It’s realty an honour and pleasure.”

Joe Biden said in September 2019: “I’ve never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.”

In October 2020 Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the Biden campaign, said: “We have reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place.”

Mr Musk’s release of the so-called Twitter Files show executives debating how to handle the story after warnings from the FBI to social media networks of a potential Russian disinformation campaign during the election.

The Republicans argue that the FBI was by this stage in a position to know that the laptop was genuine because it had been in their possession for months. Hunter Biden had failed to retrieve it from a repair shop owner who handed it to the FBI in ­December 2019 because, he said, he became fearful for his safety knowing that it was full of images of sexual activity and drug taking involving the son of a politician running for president.

After the New York Post printed its first story, alarm bells were rung by 51 former intelligence chiefs who signed an open letter warning that “our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case”.

No evidence of Russian involvement has been produced. But at the back of Twitter executives’ minds was the Russian hack of Democratic Party emails ­before the 2016 election.

The emails reveal that Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive, was unaware of the decision to prevent the sharing of the story. After a chaotic 48 hours, including a lock on the account of Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary at the time, for linking to the story, Mr Dorsey lifted the ban on October 16. However, the New York Post’s own account remained locked until October 30. The election was held on November 3.

The Twitter Files also reveal the company acceding to a request from the Biden campaign to delete five tweets, three of which showed images from the laptop of Hunter Biden naked.

The Times