Probes of Hunter Biden's dealings must go on

“No, there’s nothing here” and “No, it’s politically irrelevant” simply can no longer work as a choral Democratic response to all the distressing questions regarding Hunter Biden’s past transgressions.

For starters, note the shift in White House rhetoric regarding the question of what Joe Biden might have known when he was vice president about his wayward son’s sketchy ventures. During the 2020 campaign he said, “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.”

But the stance changed — none too subtly — in June when a spokesman for the White House Counsel’s Office said: “As we have said many times before, the president was not in business with his son.” The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, since echoed those words.

Then, last month, House members heard from two “whistleblower” IRS agents who had been assigned to look into Hunter Biden’s failure to pay taxes. They said the Justice Department slow-walked the matter and ignored recommendations to file felony tax charges. Eventually, Hunter Biden paid the outstanding amount, erasing the basis of a felony count, and probers reached a plea deal on misdemeanor tax charges that spared him prison time. It’s worth exploring the validity of those whistleblower claims.

Now that plea deal has blown up in court and Hunter Biden is pleading not guilty. Perhaps worse for the Bidens politically, Hunter’s former business partner Devon Archer testified Monday behind closed doors to members of Congress that the Biden son included his father on a number of phone calls with business associates.

HOUSE MUST PROBE

How casual were these calls? That question, too, merits further investigation by the House. So does this past week's allegation that the elder Biden wrote to Archer more than a decade ago that he was "happy you guys are together" in business. Archer was convicted of securities fraud and conspiracy involving a different company in June 2018.

At the root of the trouble is the clear nepotism that put Hunter in the energy business in Ukraine and the investment business in China. Laws should be strengthened against coziness and conflicts. Doing so would address the glaring spectacles on the other side of the aisle, too.

Remember: Former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner secured a $2 billion investment from a fund led by the Saudi crown prince; Kushner's wife, Trump's daughter Ivanka, got trademark requests fast-tracked in China; and Indian investors were offered dinner with Donald Trump Jr. as part of a marketing campaign. All apparently monetized their relations with the president.

That's the reality of our political system: In this arena, people named Biden, Trump, Bush and Clinton will have access the rest of us don't. We must crack down on using that kind of special privilege, especially given America's competitive interests in today's global economy.

Such obvious conflicts have gone unchallenged forever. Ninety years ago, political patriarch Joseph Kennedy brought along the eldest son of President Franklin Roosevelt on a trip to England to help him line up rights to import British liquor. Sure enough, Jimmy Roosevelt’s insurance firm came away with a big profit on that trade.

When Hunter Biden was on the board of the Burisma gas firm in Ukraine, should the Foreign Agents Registration Act have come into play? Might it still? Prosecutions based on that law have gone both ways. Trump ally Tom Barrack was acquitted after being charged under FARA in connection with helping the United Arab Emirates assist the U.S. government. Other Trump advisers facing similar charges were convicted.

REFORMS ARE NEEDED

Tightening FARA is just one avenue for lawmakers to consider if they want to make real anti-corruption reforms no matter where the current Biden probes may lead.

House Republicans have enough serious investigations and evidence-weighing to do without further political stunts and contrived conclusions, the kind we're accustomed to witnessing from Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s team.

The GOP-run House has an obvious partisan motive to offset, and deflect attention from, the growing criminal allegations against Donald Trump, who now faces the most serious and substantial cases ever brought against anyone who has occupied the White House. As transgressions go, an insider deal based on favoritism and family connections, even if prosecuted and proved, cannot compare to scheming to seize autocratic power by nullifying an election, a charge on which Trump was arraigned Thursday.

Hunter Biden's pursuers thus have a very long way to go to justify their "Biden crime family" rallying cry.

But Democratic elected officials were never going to expand on the hard questions about Hunter's wrongdoing that ideally should be asked and answered on behalf of the public at large.

There is still time for the House majority to minimize the showmanship, do this the right way, and reach critical, factual conclusions about this very legitimate avenue of inquiry. Otherwise "Hunter-gate" will produce more noise with neither justice nor meaningful reform — adding only a new layer of resigned cynicism about the intrigues of Washington.