It was only a matter of time before things got ugly on Capitol Hill and on Thursday Representative Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) opened fire on Hunter Biden’s dubious and profitable relationship with Burisma, a Ukranian gas company that paid him fifty thousand dollars a month or more for services unknown, by bringing up Biden’s well-known drug problems. Speaking at the House Judiciary Committee hearing on impeachment Gaetz said,
I found this very extensive profile in The New Yorker. I don’t want to make light of anybody’s substance abuse issues, I know the president is working real hard to solve those throughout the country, but it’s a little hard to believe that Burisma hired Hunter Biden to resolve their international disputes when he could not resolve his own dispute with Hertz rental car over leaving cocaine and a crack pipe in the car.
Burn.
It’s a fair point, though. It is hard to believe that a billion-dollar company would invest in someone who can’t keep his predilections with strippers and drugs out of the newspapers. This is a man who is so out of control, he lacks the basic life-skills to know it’s a bad idea to let strangers buy adult-themed toys for you. Why on earth would a company invest in such a person unless they wanted access to his powerful daddy? (Spoiler: they wouldn’t.)
If you’re like me, you’re wondering about the Hertz story. After admitting to the New Yorker that he drove while high as a kite, wrecking one rental car and having Hertz provide him with another, Hunter Biden left a crack pipe and cocaine in the car.
Zachary Romfo, who worked at the Hertz office in Prescott, told me that he found a crack pipe in the car and, on one of the consoles, a line of white-powder residue. Beau Biden’s attorney-general badge was on the dashboard. Hertz called the Prescott police department, and officers there filed a “narcotics offense” report, listing the items seized from the car, including a plastic baggie containing a “white powdery substance,” a Secret Service business card, credit cards, and Hunter’s driver’s license. Later, according to a police report, Secret Service agents informed Prescott police that Hunter was “secure/well.” Subsequent test results indicated that the glass pipe contained cocaine residue, but investigators didn’t find any fingerprints on it. Public prosecutors in the county and the city declined to bring a case against Hunter, citing a lack of evidence that the pipe had been used by him.
Does anyone believe that you would get similar treatment if you returned a rental car with narcotics in it? Please. Drug problems are serious and I think most people have sympathy for those struggling with them. But what most people don’t have is patience for the constant elevation of a person, mired in addiction, who continues to get special treatment because he won the genetics lottery. Read the whole profile in the New Yorker. It will enrage you to read in black and white about the privilege of the powerful people running this country to whom our laws don’t apply. The real privilege in this nation is held by lawmakers who use their influence to protect their loser kids and get them out of all kinds of trouble just because they can.
Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), who once worried publicly that the island of Guam could “tip over,” responded to Gaetz by bringing up his DUI arrest from 2008 when he was a lawyer. Gaetz was not convicted.
“The pot calling the kettle black is not something we should do,” Johnson said. “I don’t know what members, if any, have had any problems with substance abuse, been busted in DUI. I don’t know, but if I did I wouldn’t raise it against anyone on this committee… I don’t think it’s proper.”
Congressmen discussing what’s proper or not in terms of personal behavior is amusing. The entire place is full of bad actors, let’s be honest. But whether or not any of them have issues, we need to know how Hunter Biden, an admitted crackhead and screw-up was given a hugely lucrative position at a Ukranian gas company when his father was the vice president. That’s important.
Megan Fox is the author of “Believe Evidence; The Death of Due Process from Salome to #MeToo.” Follow on Twitter @MeganFoxWriter
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