Monthly Archives: October 2020

DOJ Charges 6 Russian Military Hackers for Global Cyberattacks

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FNC: The Justice Department on Monday announced the indictment of six military hackers with the Russian GRU who allegedly carried out a global conspiracy that included cyberattacks around the world.

The alleged attacks hit targets in Ukraine, the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, and western Pennsylvania.

“No country has weaponized its cyber-capabilities as maliciously and irresponsibly as Russia,” Assistant Attorney General John C. Demers said at a DOJ press conference.

The defendants are six current and former members of GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service. The DOJ said the attacks began in November 2015 and continued until at least October 2019. The allegations do not include any interference in U.S. elections.

The alleged attacks include malware strikes against the Ukrainian power grid, Ministry of Finance, and State Treasury Service; spearphishing campaigns and attacks against French President Emmanuel Macron’s political party, local French governments, and French politicians before their 2017 elections; the global NotPetya malware attack that infected computer worldwide including those in medical facilities in western Pennsylvania and a large American pharmaceutical company; the Olympic Destroyer attack that targeted computers supporting the 2018 Olympics; a spearphishing campaign targeting South Korean officials and citizens, as well as Olympic athletes; another spearphishing campaign against the United Kingdom’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, and attacks targeting government entities and companies in Georgia.

(Source: FBI)

(Source: FBI)

The NotPetya attack alone allegedly resulted in nearly $1 billion in losses, the DOJ said.

The Olympic attacks allegedly came after Russian athletes were banned from competing under the Russia flag due to their country’s government-sponsored doping efforts. The defendants – Yuriy Sergeyevich Andrienko, Sergey Vladimirovich , Pavel Valeryevich Frolov, Anatoliy Sergeyevich Kovalev, Artem Valeryevich Ochichenko and Petr Nikolayevich Pliskin – are charged with conspiracy, computer hacking, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and false registration of a domain name.

“The crimes committed by these defendants,” said Western District of Pennsylvania U.S. Attorney Scott Brady, “are truly breathtaking in their scope, scale, and impact.”

The Justice Department thanked tech companies including Google, Facebook and Twitter for assisting them in their investigation, but did not explain how they helped.

***

In part from the Justice Department: These GRU hackers and their co-conspirators engaged in computer intrusions and attacks intended to support Russian government efforts to undermine, retaliate against, or otherwise destabilize: (1) Ukraine; (2) Georgia; (3) elections in France; (4) efforts to hold Russia accountable for its use of a weapons-grade nerve agent, Novichok, on foreign soil; and (5) the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games after Russian athletes were banned from participating under their nation’s flag, as a consequence of Russian government-sponsored doping effort.

Their computer attacks used some of the world’s most destructive malware to date, including: KillDisk and Industroyer, which each caused blackouts in Ukraine; NotPetya, which caused nearly $1 billion in losses to the three victims identified in the indictment alone; and Olympic Destroyer, which disrupted thousands of computers used to support the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics.  The indictment charges the defendants with conspiracy, computer hacking, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and false registration of a domain name.

According to the indictment, beginning in or around November 2015 and continuing until at least in or around October 2019, the defendants and their co-conspirators deployed destructive malware and took other disruptive actions, for the strategic benefit of Russia, through unauthorized access  to victim computers (hacking).  As alleged, the conspiracy was responsible for the following destructive, disruptive, or otherwise destabilizing computer intrusions and attacks:

  • Ukrainian Government & Critical Infrastructure: December 2015 through December 2016 destructive malware attacks against Ukraine’s electric power grid, Ministry of Finance, and State Treasury Service, using malware known as BlackEnergy, Industroyer, and KillDisk;
  • French Elections: April and May 2017 spearphishing campaigns and related hack-and-leak efforts targeting French President Macron’s “La République En Marche!” (En Marche!) political party, French politicians, and local French governments prior to the 2017 French elections;
  • Worldwide Businesses and Critical Infrastructure (NotPetya): June 27, 2017 destructive malware attacks that infected computers worldwide using malware known as NotPetya, including hospitals and other medical facilities in the Heritage Valley Health System (Heritage Valley) in the Western District of Pennsylvania; a FedEx Corporation subsidiary, TNT Express B.V.; and a large U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturer, which together suffered nearly $1 billion in losses from the attacks;
  • PyeongChang Winter Olympics Hosts, Participants, Partners, and Attendees: December 2017 through February 2018 spearphishing campaigns and malicious mobile applications targeting South Korean citizens and officials, Olympic athletes, partners, and visitors, and International Olympic Committee (IOC) officials;
  • PyeongChang Winter Olympics IT Systems (Olympic Destroyer): December 2017 through February 2018 intrusions into computers supporting the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games, which culminated in the Feb. 9, 2018, destructive malware attack against the opening ceremony, using malware known as Olympic Destroyer;
  • Novichok Poisoning Investigations: April 2018 spearphishing campaigns targeting investigations by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the United Kingdom’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) into the nerve agent poisoning of Sergei Skripal, his daughter, and several U.K. citizens; and
  • Georgian Companies and Government Entities: a 2018 spearphishing campaign targeting a major media company, 2019 efforts to compromise the network of Parliament, and a wide-ranging website defacement campaign in 2019.

Cybersecurity researchers have tracked the Conspirators and their malicious activity using the labels “Sandworm Team,” “Telebots,” “Voodoo Bear,” and “Iron Viking.”

Trump Working to Free American Hostages, Including Austin Tice

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Some things just cannot be mentioned by President Trump on the campaign trail for fear of damage to existing talks and harm to the hostages. Such is true with those that the President is working diligently to release. Further, it should be noted that under the Obama/Biden administration, the notable hostages released include the treasonous Bowe Bergdahl for 5 Gitmo detainees and likely some other side deals, yet to still be determined beyond the Taliban’s diplomatic facility in Qatar.

There were also 4 Americans that were released by Iran and thankfully so, however that included an exchange of at least 7 Iranians imprisoned in the United States and that pesky pile of money alleged to have been $150 billion.

But read on and give a hat tip to the Trump White House for all of these efforts.

WSJ: A top White House of­fi­cial re­cently trav­eled to Dam­as­cus for se­cret talks with the As­sad regime, mark­ing the first time such a high-level U.S. of­fi­cial has met in Syria with the iso­lated gov­ern­ment in more than a decade, ac­cord­ing to Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cials and oth­ers fa­mil­iar with the ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Journalist Austin Tice went missing in Syria in 2012 and hasn’t been heard from since.
Photo: Fort Worth Star-Telegram/Zuma Press

Kash Pa­tel, a deputy as­sistant to Pres­i­dent Trump and the top White House coun­tert­error­ism of­fi­cial, went to Dam­as­cus ear­lier this year in an ef­fort to se­cure re­lease of at least two Amer­i­cans be­lieved to be held by Pres­i­dent Bashar al-As­sad, the of­fi­cials said. Of­fi­cials fa­mil­iar with the trip de­clined to say whom Mr. Pa­tel met with dur­ing his trip.

The last known talks be­tween White House and Syr­ian of­fi­cials in Dam­as­cus took place in 2010. The U.S. cut off diplo­matic re­la­tions with Syria in 2012 to protest Mr. As­sad’s bru­tal crack­down on pro­testers call­ing for an end to his regime.

U.S. of­fi­cials are hop­ing a deal with Mr. As­sad would lead to free­dom for Austin Tice, a free­lance jour­nal­ist and for­mer Ma­rine of­fi­cer who dis­ap­peared while re­port­ing in Syria in 2012, and Majd Ka­mal­maz, a Syr­ian-Amer­i­can ther­a­pist who dis­ap­peared af­ter be­ing stopped at a Syr­ian gov­ern­ment check­point in 2017. At least four other Amer­i­cans are be­lieved to be held by the Syr­ian gov­ern­ment, but lit­tle is known about those cases.

Ibrahim Ka­mal­maz, one of Mr. Ka­mal­maz’s sons, wel­comed Mr. Pa­tel’s trip as a pos­i­tive step in try­ing to bring his fa­ther home.

“This ad­min­is­tra­tion is com­mit­ted to our dad’s case, and we con­tinue to speak with of­fi­cials at the high­est lev­els of the U.S. Gov­ern­ment to bring dad home,” he said Sun­day.

A State De­part­ment spokes­woman de­clined to com­ment. White House of­fi­cials didn’t re­spond to re­quests for com­ment. The Syr­ian mis­sion to the United Na­tions didn’t im­me­di­ately re­spond to a re­quest for com­ment on the visit.

Both the Trump and Obama ad­min­is­trations worked to iso­late Mr. As­sad, who has en­listed help from Rus­sia and Iran to sup­press pop­u­lar protests and armed re­sis­tance that has un­suc­cess­fully sought to force him from power. The nearly decade­ long war has frac­tured the coun­try and left nearly a half-mil­lion peo­ple dead. Ear­lier this year, the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion im­posed pun­ish­ing new eco­nomic sanc­tions on Syria that have fur­ther mar­gin­al­ized the As­sad regime.

 

In March, Mr. Trump wrote Mr. As­sad a pri­vate let­ter propos­ing a “di­rect di­a­logue” about Mr. Tice, and ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cials have tried a va­ri­ety of ways to ne­go­ti­ate a deal.

Last week, Lebanon’s top se­cu­rity chief, Ab­bas Ibrahim, met at the White House with Robert O’Brien, the White House na­tional se­cu­rity ad­viser, to dis­cuss the Amer­i­cans held in Syria, ac­cord­ing to peo­ple in­volved in the talks.

Mr. Ibrahim, head of Lebanon’s Gen­eral Se­cu­rity agency, has served as a vi­tal me­di­a­tor be­tween the U.S. and Syria. Last year, he helped to se­cure the re­lease of Sam Good­win, an Amer­i­can trav­eler held for more than two months while vis­it­ing Syria as part of an at­tempt to visit every coun­try in the world.

Mr. Trump has boasted in re­cent months of his ad­min­is­tra­tion’s ef­forts in cam­paign ral­lies, and the Re­pub­li­can con­ven­tion fea­tured a video of Mr. Trump meet­ing with Amer­i­cans who had been held in In­dia, Iran, Syria, Tur­key and Ve­nezuela.

Last week, Mr. Pa­tel helped bro­ker a deal that led to the re­lease of two Amer­i­cans held by Iran-backed Houthi forces in Yemen in ex­change for the re­turn of more than 200 Houthi loy­al­ists stuck out­side the frac­tured Mid­dle East na­tion.

The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion is also try­ing to press Ve­nezuela to re­lease six oil ex­ec­u­tives held since 2017. Two other Amer­i­cans were ar­rested in May af­ter en­ter­ing Ve­nezuela to al­legedly take part in an at­tempted coup to over­throw Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro.

The fam­i­lies of both Mr. Tice and Mr. Ka­mal­maz be­lieve that the two men are alive, but Syr­ian of­fi­cials haven’t of­fered de­finitive proof.

Talks with the As­sad regime haven’t got­ten very far, ac­cord­ing to peo­ple briefed on the ne­go­ti­a­tions.

The As­sad regime has re­peat­edly de­manded that the U.S. with­draw all its forces from Syria. Sev­eral hun­dred Amer­i­can forces help pro­tect oil fields in the north­east­ern part of the coun­try as part of an ef­fort to pre­vent Is­lamic State from re­gain­ing a foothold in the coun­try.

Con­cerns about the fate of both men was height­ened by the death of Layla Shweikani, a 26-year-old Illi­nois na­tive, who hu­man rights groups said was de­tained, tor­tured and ex­e­cuted by the As­sad regime in 2016 af­ter work­ing as an ac­tivist and aid worker in Syria.

Mr. Trump has taken a per­sonal in­ter­est in try­ing to se­cure Mr. Tice’s free­dom, men­tion­ing his case in a March news con­fer­ence and is­su­ing a state­ment on the eighth an­niver­sary of his dis­ap­pear­ance.

 

Meet the Key Biden Team Players

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Out of the Biden campaign’s nearly 700-person volunteer advisory group, eight members work for Facebook, Apple, Google or Amazon, the New York Times reported in August. They include Jessica Hertz who previously worked in the Obama White House and left a top position at Facebook to join the Biden transition team. Then there is Carlos Monje, a former Twitter public policy director that also joined forces with the Biden operation. More here.

There is also the campaign chairperson which is being led by Anita Dunn, a Democratic strategist, married to Robert Bauer, former partner at Perkins Coie and former personal counsel to President Obama and the White House Counsel. Anita Dunn left the Obama White House to later to return to SKDKnickerbocker, an advertising and consulting firm she founded that lobbies for a variety of corporate interests, and where she serves as a partner. As of November, she was still leading the firm. The “D” in the firm’s name refers to Dunn. The first “K” is for Bill Knapp, currently on leave from the company to work for Michael Bloomberg’s campaign.

Ron Klain, Biden’s chief of staff during his time as vice president, isn’t officially on the campaign payroll, the longtime Biden confidant is still one of his closest advisers and is said to know his strengths and weaknesses more than almost anyone. Before working directly for Biden, Klain helped President Bill Clinton shepherd through his judicial nominations and later became Vice President Al Gore’s chief of staff.

Klain also helped lead Hillary Clinton’s debate prep back in 2016, and reprised that role prior to Biden and Trump’s first debate.

Critically, Klain served as the “Ebola czar” for the Obama administration and successfully helped guide the federal response to containing the outbreak of that virus in 2014 and 2015. Biden also hired younger sister, Valerie Biden Owens. Biden Owens was just 27 when she ran her brother’s successful first Senate run against an entrenched Republican incumbent. Biden Owens was instrumental in her brother’s decision to reverse his longtime support of the Hyde Amendment during the Democratic primary. Then there is Steve Ricchetti who also had a lobbying firm that worked for a few major pharmaceutical companies, among other clients. Add in Mike Donilon is another longtime Biden adviser and friend. He’s considered one of the former vice president’s most trusted confidants, and the pair has a long history — he’s been helping Biden as a strategist since 1981. Donilon previously worked for former Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder — who, in 1990, became the country’s first Black governor since Reconstruction — and President Clinton. And like much of Biden’s inner circle, he’s helped the candidate prepare for debates in this campaign.

Biden campaign announces $280 million ad buy through fall ...

But hold on…there is more. Plenty more, but you get the point as you read on.

Here is a list of who’s who on Biden’s economic team. Several are likely to get key posts if the former vice president manages to win the White House.

The progressives

  • Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts
  • Sarah Bloom Raskin, former Fed governor and Obama Treasury hire, her husband is a progressive member of House
  • Richard Cordray, the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
  • William Spriggs, chief economist to the AFL-CIO and former assistant secretary for policy at Obama Labor Department
  • Andrew Yang, former presidential candidate

The Biden veterans

  • Jared Bernstein, served as chief economist to Vice President Biden. and now at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
  • Ben Harris, also served as chief economist to Vice President Biden. He is now at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management
  • Don Graves, was Biden’s counselor as vice president, currently head of corporate responsibility and community relations at KeyBank

The Obama moderates

  • Gary Gensler, former head of the CFTC under Obama
  • Larry Strickling, led Obama’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration
  • Lael Brainard, Fed governor and former Obama Treasury official
  • Austan Goolsbee, former Obama chair of council of economic advisers

The young guns

  • Byron Auguste, president of Opportunity@Work and worked at the Obama White House as well as McKinsey & Co.
  • Heather Boushey, president and CEO of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. She served as chief economist for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential transition team
  • Gautam Raghavan, chief of staff to Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He was a former staffer for the Obama White House
  • Julie Siegel, a former Warren staffer who worked at CFPB and at Obama White House
  • Felicia Wong, president and CEO of the Roosevelt Institute and an expert on race and barriers to an inclusive economy
  • Sonal Shah, previously worked at Goldman Sachs, Google and the Obama White House. She was most recently the national policy director for Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign
  • Bharat Ramamurti, Warren’s senior counsel for banking and economic policy
  • Cecilia Munoz, former head of Obama’s domestic policy and worked at the National Council of La Raza

Pulling from Wall Street

  • Roger Altman, founder and senior chairman of Evercore, served in Bill Clinton’s Treasury Department
  • Jamie Dimon, head of JP Morgan Chase JPM, -1.16%. Dimon is routinely mentioned as a potential candidate for Treasury secretary
  • Roger Ferguson, president and CEO of TIAA. He is a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve
  • Tom Nides, managing director and vice chairman of Morgan Stanley MS, -0.69% was deputy secretary of state in the Obama Administration
  • Larry Fink, the head of BlackRock BLK, -0.73% has been backed by some of Biden’s Wall Street supporters for a role in the new administration
  • Tony James, the executive vice chairman of the private equity firm Blackstone BX, -0.18% is also on the wish-list of Biden’s Wall Street supporters
  • Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, has been a policy adviser to congressional Democrats

Team Fed

While not advisers in any sense, these officials could be tapped for jobs in the administration or for top Fed jobs.

  • Raphael Bostic, president of the Atlanta Fed, is the first Black leader of a regional Fed. Bostic has been speaking out about the need to narrow racial and economic gaps
  • Mary Daly, president of the San Francisco Fed, has a unique story, rising from high-school dropout to head a regional Fed bank. She is a gay woman who can explain economic issues to a broader audience than Wall Street.
  • Eric Rosengren, president of the Boston Fed. Longest-serving regional Fed president, first appointed in 2007. He has been tough on Wall Street regulation.

Potential Republicans

  • Sheila Bair , former head of the FDIC, has been mentioned as having a possible role in a Biden administration due to her tough stand on bank regulation
  • Neel Kashkari, president of the Minneapolis Fed and former Republican candidate for governor of California, favors tougher capital standards for banks and has been a dove on interest-rate policy

 

Truth: There are 600,000 Hillary Emails, not 30,000 per FBI

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Under former FBI Director Comey, the Bureau actually did manipulate political cases in 2016. Get set and read on.

This article is adapted from “October Surprise: How the FBI Tried to Save Itself and Crashed an Election,” which will be published Sept. 22 by PublicAffairs. The book is a comprehensive, revealing and dramatic look inside the bureau’s role in the 2016 presidential election.

Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016 — The pressure had been building on Special Agent John Robertson for weeks, and the case agent tasked with investigating former congressman Anthony Weiner’s digital correspondence with a 15-year-old girl felt a growing sense of alarm that the next casualty of this crazy presidential election would be his FBI career.

At first glance, Robertson did not look much like an FBI agent. He had long brown hair he often kept pulled back. He liked to say the long hair, combined with a frequent work wardrobe of jeans, flannel shirts and T-shirts, softened his appearance and made it easier for victims of sex crimes to talk to him.

Among colleagues, Robertson was respected as a dedicated agent who had a knack for quickly developing a rapport with witnesses and victims. But this empathy also meant that at times he became emotionally invested in his cases.

After six years working organized and white collar crime, Robertson had switched over to the FBI New York office’s C-20 unit, investigating sex crimes against children. These cases require the mental fortitude to sift through thousands of images of grotesque and often sadistic treatment of children. For that reason, the members of the C-20 squad are essentially volunteers. Under FBI rules, agents working those cases can raise their hands at any time and ask for a new assignment.

“They do say, before you come on this squad, be ready to lose your faith in humanity,” Robertson told the television show “Inside the FBI: New York.” But he added, “There’s a sense of satisfaction that I have not had anywhere else.”

Working out of his cubicle in an office building in Lower Manhattan, Robertson was pursuing allegations in September 2016 that Weiner had sent sexually explicit messages to a teenage girl in another state. The case was another major setback for Weiner, a politician who once seemed to have a bright future after rising from New York City councilman to leading member of Congress. He had already immolated his political career with not one but two separate sexting scandals — the second as he tried to make a comeback with a run for mayor of New York. Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, had worked as a close aide to Hillary Clinton for years. After the texting allegation surrounding a teenage girl surfaced, Abedin announced she was separating from Weiner.

11_06_weinerabedin_01 Longtime Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin, right, and her estranged husband, Anthony Weiner, in 2013. Reuters

For Robertson, the Weiner case was not the problem. Or at least, it was not the biggest problem. The more pressing issue was the hundreds of thousands of Abedin’s emails, including many that were to or from Clinton, that Robertson had found on Weiner’s laptop in late September, when he had gotten a search warrant to look for possible images of sex crimes involving children.

While the full role of Robertson in the investigation into Clinton’s emails is being described here for the first time, in 2018 RealClearInvestigations reported that he was the only male agent listed in court filings on the Weiner case and that Robertson worked on a New York squad investigating crimes against children..

After flagging the issue of the Abedin emails to his supervisors at the end of September, he had heard nothing.

“The crickets I was hearing was really making me uncomfortable because something was going to come down,” Robertson later told internal investigators. “Why isn’t anybody here? Like if I’m the supervisor of any [Counterintelligence] squad … and I hear about this, I’m getting on with headquarters and saying ‘hey some agent working child porn here may have [Hillary Clinton] emails. Get your ass on the phone, call [the case agent], and get a copy of that drive,’ because that’s how it should be.

And that nobody reached out to me within, like, that night, I still to this day don’t understand what the hell went wrong.”

Robertson was hoping to get some real answers, or at least some assurance that the issue was not being swept under the rug. He wondered if the prosecutors on the Weiner case, Amanda Kramer and Stephanie Lake, could get the attention of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara. Robertson thought Bharara might “kick some of these lazy FBI folks in the butt and get them moving.”

When he got to Kramer’s office on Oct. 19, she asked him, “What’s up?” Sitting in a chair, Robertson exhaled deeply and began talking, his knee pumping much of the time. He had told his bosses about the Clinton emails weeks ago. Nothing had happened. Or rather, the only thing that had happened was his boss had instructed Robertson to erase his computer work station. Ostensibly, that was to ensure there was no classified material on it. But it also meant there was no record of what Robertson had done, or had not done, with the laptop information. He was starting to feel like he was going to be made a scapegoat, and he was freaking out. He had already talked to a lawyer.

The prosecutors tried to both calm him down and warn him that going outside regular channels could destroy his career.

“I’m a little scared here,” he told Kramer and Lake. “I don’t care who wins this election, but this is going to make us look really, really horrible.” Chief among his concerns was that James B. Comey’s testimony to Congress in July and September about the number of Clinton emails at issue was now outdated and incorrect.

A big admirer of Comey, Robertson worried the FBI director had not been told what was going on, and that ignorance would come back to bite not just him but the entire FBI. And Robertson feared that when that happened, he, the lowly case agent, would be blamed.

The prosecutors, Kramer and Lake, thought Robertson was getting paranoid. They also gave him a blunt warning: If Robertson decided to tell outsiders about the emails, he could be prosecuted. The legal rationale behind such a scenario is faulty at best — the fact of the emails’ existence on the laptop was not classified. If Robertson had decided to tell a lawmaker or a reporter about them, that could be a fireable offense, but probably not a criminal one.

Rather than having his doubts and suspicions quelled by the prosecutors, he left the meeting even more alarmed.

The next day, the two prosecutors on the Weiner case were still worried about their case agent, and they thought he might act out in some way. So they went to see their bosses to talk about the laptop issue and Robertson’s concerns. Joon Kim, the second-in-command at the U.S. attorney’s office, decided to bring the issue to his boss Bharara. They wanted to take some action that would satisfy Robertson, but they also did not want to meddle in the FBI’s internal chain of command. Kim thought it was not really SDNY’s business.

Bharara was generally on the same page as Kim. If the agent was so agitated, the prosecutors should do something, but Bharara was wary of getting out of his lane on a high-profile case like the Clinton emails. Bharara’s office did not have a role in that investigation; he could not just go butting into it without potentially angering a whole slew of senior officials at both the Justice Department and the FBI. Better to reach out to Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates’s office just to be safe, Bharara decided.

Robertson, however, continued to privately boil at the apparent inaction all around him. That lunch hour, he sat down at a computer and wrote an email with the subject “Letter to Self.”

In the coming years and months, FBI and Justice Department officials far higher up the chain — including Comey — would write similar memos, seeking to document sensitive conversations in real time and protect their reputations as they dealt with investigations of political figures. Robertson’s email — which has not been previously disclosed — was the first in that pattern, revealing a crisis of conscience that would repeat and reverberate throughout the FBI, the Justice Department and the country in ways no one could predict.

“I have very deep misgivings about the institutional response of the FBI to the congressional investigation into the Hillary Clinton email matter,” Robertson wrote, adding, “however, I am not an institutional representative of the FBI. I do not have the authority (or competence, I suppose) to make determinations of this nature.”

Robertson’s lawyer had told him to tell his boss, a supervisory special agent, and leave any further action to his superiors.

“Put simply: I don’t believe the handling of the material I have by the FBI is ethically or morally right. But my lawyer’s advice — that I simply put my SSA on notice should cover me — is that I have completed CYA, and I have done so,” Robertson wrote, using the acronym for “cover your ass.”

“Further, I was told by [Kramer] that should I ‘whistleblow,’ I will be prosecuted, and she wished to ‘talk me out of it’ should I want to whistleblow. I was informed that this material” — the Clinton emails on Weiner’s laptop — “was obtained after the subpoena was served, and the subpoena is only for materials possessed at the time of service.”

He meant a Congressional subpoena for all Clinton emails in the FBI’s possession applied only to the original tranche of roughly 30,000 she had turned over from her server.

“I consider that lawyerly bulls—,” Robertson continued. “I possess — the FBI possesses — 20 times more emails than Comey testified to (approx. 30,000 I believe. I have 600,000+). While Comey did not know at the time about what I have, people in the FBI do now, and as far as I know, we are being silent. Further, while I have no authority in my warrant to look into the emails (and I have stuck to my limited search authority), the mere existence of these emails is sufficient to give me pause when I see that we (FBI) have been served with a subpoena for all materials related to HC.

“I am not going to whistleblow.

“If I say or do nothing more, I am falling short ethically and morally. And later, I may be accused of being a Hillary Clinton hack because of the timing of all this. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am apolitical.

“But if I say something (ie, whistleblow), I will lose my reputation, my career, and risk prosecution.

“I will also be accused of being a Donald Trump hack. Again, nothing could be further from the truth.”

“If this were for a cause greater than a politicized congressional investigation that will have no bearing on the outcome of a pathetic presidential race, I would consider speaking up against legal advice. But I suppose I shall lose sleep over this, and not my career and reputation.”

At 12:44, Robertson clicked Send on the email to himself. He had put it all down in writing, should someone come looking. He was certain someone would.

Despite Robertson’s doubts, or perhaps because of them, the wheels of bureaucracy were slowly starting to spin. The following week, a senior Justice official asked the FBI what was going on with the Weiner laptop.

At FBI headquarters, senior officials, having been told a month ago about the emails on the Weiner laptop and done little or nothing, scheduled a briefing for Comey for Thursday, Oct. 27.

Comey’s second-in-command, Deputy Director Andy McCabe, was out of town but called in to the meeting, but after some prodding by Jim Baker, the FBI’s top lawyer, Comey suggested McCabe should back out of the discussion.

At the time, McCabe was under pressure over a story I had written about hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations that Virginia’s Democratic governor, Terry McAuliffe, had made to McCabe’s wife’s failed 2015 run for political office. FBI officials also knew I was working on a follow up piece about internal FBI concerns over McCabe’s role in an investigation of the Clinton Foundation.

Publicly, the FBI staunchly defended McCabe, saying there was no ethical issue and he and the Bureau had done everything right. Privately, Comey and his senior advisers felt McCabe should step away from the Clinton cases.

“I don’t need you on this call,” Comey said finally to McCabe who grudgingly accepted his boss’s determination and hung up.

Once Comey and the rest of his aides got down to discussing the issue, they quickly agreed they needed to seek a search warrant for the Clinton emails on the Weiner laptop. Comey felt there was another, larger issue to be tackled: He believed he had an ethical obligation to notify Congress that the case was being reopened. That view was not shared by everyone around the table.

Over the course of two meetings on consecutive days, the group considered a number of scenarios, most of which involved the FBI being blamed in one form or another for helping elect Hillary Clinton. By their own measure, they did not discuss the other possibility — whether Trump could benefit and win, and if the FBI might be blamed for that.

By his own telling, Comey explicitly ruled out even considering whether his actions might elect Trump, arguing it would be fatal for the FBI to consider the political consequences of their actions. “Down that path lies the death of the FBI,” he declared.

It was not just Comey who thought that way. Among his senior advisers, few gave much credence to the idea that Trump had a real shot of winning the election.

That Friday, Comey sent a short letter to Congressional leaders announcing the FBI “has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation.”

Pandora’s box had been opened.

As news of the reopened investigation engulfed cable news, Special Agent Robertson wrote himself another email. The fear and anger of the past month had given way to satisfaction and relief.

“Someone in the chain of command had the sense to inform the director and I am elated to have learned that he did the right thing,” Robertson wrote at 4:30 that day. “I suppose I should have had greater faith in the FBI, but this is a different matter.”

 

Hunter not Campaigning due to his Resume

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Whew, lots of breaking news on the Biden front and media is either slow to report or has chosen not to report at all. And with allegedly the best intelligence community in the world, exactly where is their dossier on the Biden’s?

But for some ground-truth, read on, then tell those close to you or share this.

It really is a family affair and has the hallmarks of RICO. Remember too that all of Senator Biden’s documents and records from his time as a senator are not to be released per his order(s). It is time to review all his financial disclosures for all the years he was in the Senate to determine gaps in wealth and income.

Casey Owens, the latest member of the Biden family to benefit financially or professionally from the former Senator’s connections, joined “the highest-level bilateral economic forum” four years after graduating from college and a stint at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

She wielded considerable influence over the direction of U.S.-China relations between 2009 and 2011, as she described her team as “advising” former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and responsible for “coordinat[ing] the priorities within the agenda for the Dialogue” and “spearhead[ing] the negotiations of proposals.”

The appointment triggered no media furore, nor coverage, with the exception of a buried two-sentence mention in a New York Times article from this year.

Biden, identified as one of the “top five senators payments or contributions to a family businesses or employer” in a 2008 Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics report, also funneled $3,618 from his 2002 Senate campaign fund to Owens.

An unearthed cable reveals Owens was part of the elite Strategic and Economic Dialogue II planning trip to Beijing as part of the Economic Track delegation alongside State and Treasury Executive and Senior officials. Despite being out of the administration for five years, she attended the Obama administration’s final state dinner.

Her proximity to American and Chinese officials casts the rest of the family’s China-based business dealings, chiefly those of Hunter Biden, in an interesting and, perhaps, suspicious light. Hat tip and more details here.

But hold on, it get nuttier.

RCI: Hunter Biden profited from his father’s political connections long before he struck questionable deals in countries where Joe Biden was undertaking diplomatic missions as vice president. In fact, virtually all the jobs listed on his resume going back to his first position out of college, which paid a six-figure salary, came courtesy of the former six-term senator’s donors, lobbyists and allies, a RealClearInvestigations examination has found.

One document reviewed by RCI reveals that a Biden associate admitted “finding employment” for Hunter Biden specifically as a special favor to his father, then a Senate leader running for president. He secured a $1.2 million gig on Wall Street for his young son, even though it was understood he had no experience in high finance. Many of his generous patrons, in turn, ended up with legislation and policies favorable to their businesses or investments, an RCI review of lobbying records and legislative actions taken by the elder Biden confirms.

That the 50-year-old Hunter has been trading on his Democratic father’s political influence his entire adult life raises legal questions about possible influence-peddling, government watchdogs and former federal investigators say. In addition, the more than two-decades-long pattern of nepotism casts fresh doubt on Joe Biden’s recent statements that he “never discussed” business with his son, and that his activities posed “no conflicts of interest.”

No fewer than three committees in the Republican-controlled Senate have opened probes into potential Biden family conflicts. Investigators are also poring over Treasury Department records that have flagged suspicious activities involving Hunter’s banking transactions and business deals that may be connected to his father’s political influence.

U.S. ethics rules require all government officials to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest in taking official actions. The Bidens have denied any wrongdoing.

While most of the attention on Hunter has focused on his dealings in Ukraine and China when his father was in the White House, he also cashed in on cushy jobs and sweetheart deals throughout his dad’s long Senate career, records reveal.

“Hunter Biden’s Ukraine-China connections are just one element of the Biden corruption story,” said Tom Fitton, president of the Washington-based watchdog group Judicial Watch, who contends Biden used both the Office of the Vice President and the Senate to advance his son’s personal interests.

In each case, Hunter Biden appeared under-qualified for the positions he obtained. All the while, he was a chronic abuser of alcohol and drugs, including crack cocaine, and has cycled in and out of no fewer than six drug-rehab treatment programs, according to published reports. He’s also been the subject of at least two drug-related investigations by police, one in 1988 and another in 2016,  according to federal records and reports. A third drug investigation resulted in his discharge from the U.S. Navy Reserve in 2014.

This comprehensive account of Hunter Biden’s “unique career trajectory,” as one former family friend gently put it, was pieced together through interviews with more than a dozen people, several of whom insisted on anonymity to describe private conversations, and after an in-depth examination of public records, including Securities and Exchange Commission filings, court papers, campaign filings, federal lobbying disclosures, and congressional documents.

Hunter Biden’s resume begins 24 years ago. Here is a rundown of the plum positions he has managed to land since 1996, thanks to his politically connected father and his boosters:

                                         1996-1998: MBNA Corp.

Fresh out of college, credit-card giant MBNA put him on its payroll as “senior vice president” earning more than $100,000 a year, plus an undisclosed signing bonus. Delaware-based MBNA at the time was Biden’s largest donor and lobbying the Delaware senator for bankruptcy reforms that would make it harder for consumers to declare bankruptcy and write off credit-card debt.

Besides a job for Hunter, bank executives and employees gave generously to Joe Biden’s campaigns – $214,000 total, federal records show – and one top executive even bought Biden’s Wilmington, Del., home for more than $200,000 above the market value, real estate records show. The exec paid top dollar – $1.2 million – for the old house even though it lacked central air conditioning. MBNA also flew Biden and his wife to events and covered their travel costs, disclosure forms show.

Sen. Biden eventually came through for MBNA by sponsoring and whipping votes in the Senate to pass the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention Act.

When NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw asked Biden during the 2008 presidential campaign whether it was wrong “for someone like you in the middle of all this to have your son collecting money from this big credit-card company while you were on the (Senate) floor protecting its interests,” Biden gave an answer he would repeat many times in the future: “Absolutely not,” he snapped, arguing it was completely appropriate and that Hunter deserved the position and generous salary because he graduated from Yale.

                         1998-2001: Commerce Department

Hunter also capitalized on the family name in 1998 when he joined President Clinton’s agency. In spite of having no experience in the dot-com industry, he was appointed “executive director of e-commerce policy coordination,” pulling down another six-figure salary plus bonuses.

He landed the job after his father’s longtime campaign manager and lawyer William Oldaker called then-Commerce Secretary William Daley, who’d also worked on Biden’s campaigns, and put in a good word for his son, according to public records.

                            2001-2009: Oldaker, Biden & Belair

After Republican President George W. Bush took over the Commerce Department, Hunter left the government and joined Oldaker to open a lobbying shop in Washington, just blocks from Congress, where he gained access to exclusive business and political deals.

Federal disclosure forms show Hunter Biden and his firm billed millions of dollars while lobbying on behalf of a host of hospitals and private colleges and universities, among other clients. In a 2006 disclosure statement submitted to the Senate, Hunter said his clients were “seeking federal appropriations dollars.”

Hunter won the contract to represent St. Joseph’s University from an old Biden family friend who worked in government relations at the university and proposed he solicit earmarks for one of its programs in Philadelphia. The friend, Robert Skomorucha, remarked in a press interview that Hunter had “a very strong last name that really paid off in terms of our lobbying efforts.”

These clients, like MBNA, also favored bankruptcy reforms to make it harder for patients and students to discharge debt in bankruptcy filings. At the same time Hunter was operating as a Beltway lobbyist, he was receiving “consulting payments” from his old employer MBNA, which was still courting his father over the bankruptcy reforms.

In 2007, Hunter also dined with a private prison lobbyist who had business before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee Joe Biden chaired, according to published reports. Senate rules bar members or their staff from having contact with family members who are lobbyists seeking to influence legislation.

Hunter’s lawyer-lobbyist firm was embroiled in a conflict-of-interest controversy in 2006 when it was criticized for representing a lobbyist under investigation by the House ethics committee. The lobbyist was still taking payments from his old K street firm while working as a top aide on the House Appropriations Committee. Hunter at the time was lobbying that same committee for earmarks for his clients.

William Oldaker did not just make Hunter a rich lobbyist. Oldaker also secured a $1 million loan for him through a bank he co-founded, WashingtonFirst, that Hunter sought for an investment scheme, which later went sour.

Joe Biden deposited hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign and political action committee donations at WashingtonFirst, while funneling hundreds of thousands in campaign and PAC expenditures to Oldaker, Biden & Belair. Joe Biden’s payments to Hunter’s lobbying firm, including more than $143,000 in 2007 alone, were listed as “legal services” in Federal Election Commission filings.

Oldaker did not respond to a request for comment left at his office.

                            2003-2005: National Group LLP 

While serving as a partner at Oldaker, Biden & Belair, Hunter also registered as a lobbyist for National Group, a lobbying-only subsidiary which shared offices with OB&B  and specialized in targeted spending items inserted into legislation known as “earmarks.”

Hunter represented his father’s alma mater, the University of Delaware, and other Biden constituents and submitted requests to Biden’s office for earmarks benefiting these clients in appropriations bills.

                             2006-2007: Paradigm Companies LLC

In 2005, when Joe Biden was thinking about making another run at the White House, after a 1987 bid that ended in plagiarism charges, his lobbyist son was looking for a new line of work too.

In early 2006, Wall Street executive and Biden family friend Anthony Lotito said, Biden’s younger brother, Jim, phoned him on behalf of the senator. He said Biden wanted his youngest son – whom he still called “Honey” – to get out of the lobbying business to avoid allegations of conflicts of interest that might dog Biden’s presidential bid.

“Biden was concerned with the impact that Hunter’s lobbying activities might have on his expected campaign [and asked his brother to] seek Lotito’s assistance in finding employment for Hunter in a non-lobbying capacity,” according to a January 2007 complaint that Lotito filed in New York state court against Hunter over alleged breach of contract in a related venture. (Jim and Hunter Biden denied such a phone call took place as described.)

Lotito told the court he agreed to help Hunter as a favor to the senator, who had served on the powerful banking committee. He figured “the financial community might be a good starting place in which to seek out employment on Hunter’s behalf,” the court documents state. But he quickly found that Wall Street had “no interest” in hiring Biden.

So the Bidens hatched a scheme to buy a hedge fund, “whereby Hunter would then assume a senior executive position with the company.” And Lotito helped broker the deal. Despite having no Wall Street experience, Biden was appointed interim CEO and president of the Paradigm investment fund and given a $1.2 million salary, according to SEC filings. Lotito joined the enterprise as a partner, and agreed to shepherd Hunter, still in his mid-thirties, through his new role in high-finance.

“Given Hunter Biden’s inexperience in the securities industry,” the complaint states, it was agreed that Lotito would maintain an office at the new holding company’s New York headquarters “in order to assist Biden in discharging his duties as president.”

After the venture failed, Lotito sued the Bidens for fraud. The Bidens countersued and the two parties settled in 2008.

                                                    2006-2009: Amtrak

During this same period, Hunter was appointed vice chairman of the taxpayer-subsidized rail line, thanks to the sponsorship of powerful Democratic Sen. Harry Reid, a political ally of his father.

In a 2006 statement submitted to the Senate during his confirmation, Hunter asserted that he was qualified for the Amtrak board because “as a frequent commuter and Amtrak customer for over 30 years, I have literally logged thousands of miles on Amtrak.”

Amtrak has been a major supporter of Joe Biden, donating to both his Senate and presidential campaigns and even naming a train station after him in Wilmington. In return, Biden has supported taxpayer subsidies for the government railroad throughout his political career.

In his testimony, Hunter denied his Amtrak appointment pushed conflict-of-interest boundaries.

                          2009- : Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC

Hunter co-founded the investment firm five months after his father moved into the White House and incorporated it in his father’s home state of Delaware, which has strict corporate secrecy rules.

At the time, Obama had tapped Vice President Biden to oversee the recovery from the financial crisis. Three weeks after Rosemont was incorporated, Hunter and his partners set up a subsidiary called Rosemont TALF and got $24 million in loans from the federal program known as the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility. TALF was designed to help bail out banks and auto lenders hit by the crisis.

Within months, Rosemont had secured a total of $130 million from the program. Some of the government cash was then funneled into an investment fund incorporated in the Cayman Islands, SEC records show. Such offshore accounts are commonly used to evade taxes.

The move raised ethical flags with government watchdogs who suspected the bailout cash was used to benefit a well-connected insider.

Other records reveal that another subsidiary created years later – Rosemont Realty – touted to its investors that board adviser Hunter was politically connected. It highlighted in a company prospectus that he was the “son of Vice President Biden.”

                               2009-2012: Eudora Global

On his resume, Hunter also lists himself as “founder” of yet another investment firm. But Eudora’s articles of incorporation show it was actually set up by a major Biden donor, Jeffrey Cooper, who put Hunter on his board after his father became vice president.

A self-described “friend of the Biden family,” Cooper also happened to run one of the largest asbestos-litigation firms in the country — SimmonsCooper LLC — and had courted Biden to make it easier to file asbestos lawsuits by defeating tort reforms. As a leader on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden had blocked reform of asbestos litigation every time bills reached the Senate floor.

Cooper’s law firm, which directly lobbied the Delaware senator’s office to kill such bills, donated more than $200,000 to Biden’s campaigns over the years, as well as his Unite Our States PAC, FEC records show. In fact, SimmonsCooper was one of Biden’s biggest donors during his failed 2007-2008 run for president, pumping $53,000 into his campaign.

The firm also put up $1 million in investment capital to help his son buy out the Paradigm hedge fund as part of the arrangement brokered by another Biden family friend, Lotito, to find non-lobbying work for Hunter.. Thanks in large part to Biden’s effort to kill bills reining in asbestos trial lawyers, SimmonsCooper has hauled in more than $1 billion for alleged asbestos victims.

Attempts to reach Cooper for comment were unsuccessful.

                               2009-2016: Boies Schiller Flexner LLP:

When Joe Biden became Vice President, Hunter landed a high-paying, no-show job at the New York-based law firm, a Democrat shop long tied to the Clintons. Another major Biden donor, the firm gave him the title “of counsel.”

Boies Schiller brought Hunter aboard in 2009 after the Bidens hired the firm to defend Hunter against charges he defrauded partners in the Paradigm investment venture. Boies Schiller managed to get the case dismissed.

In 2014, a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch, who was under investigation and looking to repair his reputation to attract Western investors, started sending large payments to Boies to support Hunter for unspecified work. It’s unclear what Hunter did for the oligarch, who ran the gas giant Burisma, but $283,000 showed up at the same time his father was tapped by Obama to play a central role in overseeing U.S. energy policy in Ukraine.

The firm has pumped more than $50,000 into Biden’s campaigns.

How Hunter Biden got involved with Chinese company that he just quit | The Seattle Times source

                                2013-2019: BHR Partners

After Obama named Biden his point man on China policy, Rosemont Seneca set up a joint venture worth $1 billion with the Bank of China called BHR – and Hunter was named vice-chairman and director of the new concern.

Following in the shadow of his father’s political trajectory, Hunter’s new venture won the first-of-its-kind investment deal with the Chinese government at the same time Biden was jetting to Beijing to meet with top communist leaders. Secret Service records reveal Hunter flew to China on Air Force Two with his father while brokering the December 2013 deal. He arranged for one of his Chinese partners to shake hands with the vice president. BHR was registered 12 days later. Beijing OK’d a business license shortly afterward.

“No one else had such an arrangement in China,” said Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute.

Hunter resigned from the board of the Beijing-backed equity firm earlier this year as his father faced growing criticism on the campaign trail over what critics called a glaring conflict of interest. He did not, however, divest his 10% equity stake in the Chinese fund, which is estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars.

Schweizer, whose books include “Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elites,” said Biden went “soft” on the Chinese communists so his son could “cash in” on China business deals. Biden insists he did not discuss the venture with his son before, during or after his official visit to Beijing. But others see obvious hypocrisy at play in the Biden family’s self-dealing in notoriously corrupt China.

“Biden was one of the most vocal champions of anti-corruption efforts in the Obama administration. So when this same Biden takes his son with him to China aboard Air Force Two, and within days Hunter joins the board of an investment advisory firm with stakes in China, it does not matter what father and son discussed,” said Sarah Chayes, author of “Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens National Security.” “Joe Biden has enabled this brand of practice.”

                                     2013-2014: U.S. Navy Reserve

Hunter was selected for a direct commission as a public affairs officer in a Virginia reserve unit.

He clearly received special treatment in securing the part-time post. Officers had to issue him two waivers – one for his age and one for a previous drug offense.

His vice president father swore him in at the White House in a small, private ceremony.

Barely a year later, authorities booted Hunter from the Navy for cocaine use after he tested positive from a urine test. The reason for his discharge was withheld from the press for several months.

2014-2019: Burisma Holdings

The Ukrainian gas giant added Hunter to its board soon after Obama named his father his point man on Ukraine policy, focusing on energy. The company paid his son as much as $83,000 a month, even though he had no energy experience to bring to the table and was required to attend just one board meeting a year.

At the time, the vice president was steering U.S. aid to Kiev to help develop its gas fields, which stood to benefit Burisma as the holder of permits to develop natural gas in three of Ukraine’s most lucrative fields. Biden promised Ukrainian officials the US would pump more than $1 billion into their energy industry and economy during a visit to Kiev in late April 2014. He urged leaders to increase the country’s gas supply and to rely on Americans to help them. Less than three weeks later, Burisma appointed his son to the board, after already retaining him for undisclosed services through Boies Schiller.

Burisma was run by an oligarch, Mykola Zlochevsky, who was under investigation at the time and seeking Western protection from prosecution. In a move observers suspect was intended to send a message to prosecutors, the company sent out a news release in May 2014 claiming, falsely, that Hunter would be in charge of its “legal unit.” Burisma also trumpeted the fact that Hunter was “the son of the current U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden.”

Biden’s office was aware Burisma was under investigation. The administration had tried to partner with the gas company through U.S. aid programs, but the outreach project was blocked over corruption concerns lodged by career diplomats.

In early 2016, Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees if Ukraine did not dismiss the country’s top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma. “If the prosecutor is not fired,” Biden recalled telling Ukraine’s leader, “you’re not getting the money.”

Biden’s muscling worked: Shokin was sacked in March 2016.

The former vice president says he was carrying out official U.S. policy that sought to remove an ineffective prosecutor. But Shokin had raided the home of Burisma’s owner and seized his property.

In addition, Shokin said that as part of his probe he was making plans to interview Hunter about millions of dollars in fees he and his partners had received from Burisma. He insists he was fired because he refused to close the investigation.

“The truth is that I was forced out because I was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma, and Joe Biden’s son was a member of the board,” Shokin said in a recent sworn affidavit prepared for a European court. “I assume Burisma had the support of Joe Biden because his son was on the board.” He added that the vice president himself had “significant interests” in Burisma.

The prosecutor who replaced Shokin shut down the Burisma probe within 10 months. Burisma’s founder was also taken off a U.S. government visa ban list.

Biden claims he only learned of his son joining the Burisma board from the news media. But there is evidence Biden had been consulted in advance. White House visitor logs show that Biden met with Hunter’s business partner Devon Archer on April 16, 2014. Burisma put Archer on its board shortly thereafter, followed by Hunter the next month. (Both Archer and Hunter maintain Burisma never came up during the private visit in Biden’s office, which lasted late into the night.)

The day after Joe Biden’s meeting with Hunter’s partner in the White House, Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi reportedly emailed Hunter to thank him for inviting him to Washington and “giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent[sic] some time together.” The Biden campaign asserts it cannot find a meeting with Pozharskyi on the former vice president’s “schedule,” though it did not deny such a meeting could have taken place. The Ukrainian official mentioned going out for coffee with Hunter on April 17, 2014, which indicated he was physically in D.C. at the time. RCI has not confirmed the authenticity of the April 17 email document, first disclosed by the New York Post after obtaining it from a hard drive allegedly copied from a laptop of Hunter Biden left at a computer repair shop in Wilmington, Del. Pozharskyi did not respond to emails seeking comment.

Hunter stepped down from Burisma’s board in April 2019, a month before his father announced his White House bid and after critics made an issue of the conflicts his sinecure posed. He has since kept a very low profile. Unlike Trump’s children, Biden’s son is not out on the trail campaigning for him.

1,850 Boxes Sealed Until After Election

“Hunter Biden had no experience in the field, but he did have a notable connection to the vice president, who publicly has bragged about making clear to the Ukrainians that he alone controlled U.S. aid to the country,” noted Jonathan Turley, a public-interest law professor at George Washington University.

Retired FBI official I.C. Smith, who led public corruption investigations in Washington and Little Rock, Ark., said both father and son should have known joining Burisma was a bad idea, adding that it gives at least the appearance he was leveraging his name for payoffs from shady clients abroad.

“Clearly he’s led a troubled life and would be the sort of person susceptible to becoming engaged in this sort of rather sordid deal,” Smith said of Hunter.

“When he said his father asked if the deal was on the up and up and was assured it was, I would think, given Hunter’s past, the father would have asked more questions,” he added.

Hunter acknowledged in an ABC News interview last year that he lacked experience in both energy and Ukraine, but maintained that Burisma was impressed by other things on his resume.

“Ironically, Hunter highlighted his work at MBNA and his work on the board of Amtrak as evidence of his qualifications for the Burisma gig,” said Fitton of Judicial Watch. “But both the MBNA and Amtrak jobs, under any sensible analysis, were obvious favors for Joe Biden.”

Fitton argued that Biden’s claim he never discussed his son’s jobs and business deals rings hollow against the lengthy record of something-for-nothing nepotism.

“That’s campaign spin,” he said. “Hunter has already admitted to having at least one conversation on the Ukraine issue with Vice President Biden.”

Biden defenders argue that many relatives of politicians are often involved in government and politics. Ivanka Trump and Don Trump Jr., for instance, have cozy relationships with, or financial stakes in, companies that may benefit from those decisions. They also point out that, while they may look bad, there’s nothing illegal about such arrangements.

Fitton isn’t so sure. He said Judicial Watch is demanding Obama administration documents related to Hunter’s Ukraine and China deals, as well as other business arrangements potentially monetizing Biden’s political power.

“We can’t be sure if the arrangements were legal,” he said. “If any payments or jobs were neither ordinary nor customary, there may be legal issues.”

It’s a federal crime to provide a government benefit or favorable change in policy in exchange for something of personal value. At a minimum, argued former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, Biden “had a conflict of interest with the position his son had” on the Burisma board, noting that at the time, Biden was pushing energy policies that favored the gas giant.

Not all of Hunter Biden’s critics are coming from the right, either.

“It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Hunter’s foreign employers and partners were seeking to leverage Hunter’s relationship with Joe, either by seeking improper influence or to project access to him,” said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, a liberal watchdog group based in Washington.

While Joe Biden insists “there’s been no indication of any conflict of interest from Ukraine or anywhere else,” Senate investigators are seeking a number of related emails and memos generated during the Obama administration, as well as his 36-year Senate career. That period, spanning from 1973 to 2009, coincides with a large chunk of his son’s resume.

However, Biden has sealed the bulk of the records at the University of Delaware Library, which refuses to release any of his papers until after the election. It maintains more than 1,850 boxes of Biden records, including his speeches, voting records, position papers and notes from confidential interviews he’s conducted with foreign leaders, among other documents. The papers the university is keeping a lid on could shed light on Biden’s thinking behind foreign policies and controversial bills he sponsored.

A spokeswoman said the library will not release any of Biden’s papers to the public until they are “properly processed and archived.” Until then, “access is only available with Vice President Biden’s express consent,” she said, while declining to answer whether the university would comply if the Senate subpoenaed documents as part of its investigation of the Bidens.

The university houses the Biden Institute, which is part of the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration.

Through a lawyer, Hunter maintained he and his father dutifully avoided “conflicts of interest” — or even “the appearance of such conflicts.” In every business pursuit, he asserted, they acted “appropriately and in good faith.”

However, in a moment of candor during a recent ABC News interview, Hunter confessed: “I don’t think that there’s a lot of things that would have happened in my life if my last name wasn’t Biden,” before adding, “There’s literally nothing my father in some way hasn’t had influence over.”

Still, the elder Biden argues it’s the Trump family who has the nepotism problem. In a recent CBS “60 Minutes” interview, he slammed the president for letting his daughter and son-in-law “sit in on Cabinet meetings.”

“It’s just simply improper because you should make it clear to the American public that everything you’re doing is for them,” he intoned. “For them.”