EDITOR’S NOTE, February 16, 2024: On February 15, Justice Department Counsel David Weiss indicted FBI informant Alexander Smirnov on two felony counts of making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record for claims made to the bureau. The charges are in relation to June 2020 FD-1023 form alleging President Joe Biden and son Hunter Biden received a combined $10 million in a bribery scheme involving the Ukrainian energy company, Burisma.
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When the Bidens need a really syrupy approach to its public statements, they can count on Matt "Biden Adviser" Viser to lay it on thick. After Hunter's stunt statement before snubbing a congressional subpoena, Viser's Thursday valentine was headlined:
‘I am here’: Hunter Biden makes a defiant appearance
The subheadline underlined that Hunter's stunt reflected "a desire to wrest control of his own narrative." Viser is certainly under Hunter's control. He wrote the speech "was by turns emotional, plaintive and contentious. It appeared to have two main aims: humanizing him after years of vilification, and emphasizing that his father had nothing to do with his business affairs despite the impeachment inquiry." Nothing? Really?
Hunter’s portrait of his father as a loving, supportive parent contrasted sharply with Republicans’ charges that the “Biden crime family” has improperly mixed business and government, accusations for which they have provided no substantive evidence. His parents “literally saved my life,” Hunter said, stating in the clearest and most public way to date that his father had nothing financially to do with his business.
Not when he worked as a lawyer, he said, nor when he was on the board of Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company. His father was not involved in Hunter’s partnership with a Chinese businessman, he said, and had no part in his foreign or domestic investments. He also had no role in his latest efforts to make a career as an artist…
All of this is preposterous. Simply repeating it without challenging it is a sure sign of a publicist. Post "Fact Checker" Glenn Kessler's been asleep at the wheel for all of this. Viser was feeling Hunter's pain. He dragged out the old traffic accident, even:
Many on his team have been upset that he has few defenders — he is viewed in some quarters as a political third rail, and rarely are Democrats on television willing to speak up for him. On Wednesday, he decided to do it himself.
The setting was significant: He spoke in the same place where he came often as a child when his dad was an up-and-coming senator. It was near the spot where his father received a phone call almost exactly 51 years ago, on Dec. 18, 1972, telling him that his wife and daughter had been killed and that his two sons — Beau and Hunter — were in the hospital.
The only feint toward an opposing viewpoint was a brief quote from Rep. James Comer: “He does not get to dictate the terms of the subpoena." Viser let shameless Hunter Biden accuse someone else of being shameless.
The president’s son said House Republicans continue to focus on “a nonexistent bribe.” He noted that Greene displayed naked photos of him during committee hearings. “They have taken the light of my dad’s love for me and presented it as darkness,” Hunter Biden said. “They have no shame.”
At least Viser noticed that Hunter not only snubbed the committee, he snubbed reporter questions: "Hunter Biden reiterated that he was willing to answer questions anytime as long as it is in a public session — although he ignored the questions reporters shouted at him after he gave his statement."
