A Subpoena for Slenderman

Who's Hunter-ing Jared?

Almost every day, from some corner of the right-o-sphere with access to my inbox or eyeballs, I catch a screaming headline about Hunter Biden. This weekend’s email header is from Tom Fitton’s Judicial Watch: “New: Secret FBI Records on Hunter Biden!” If you’re a rightwing influencer making money off large and small conservative donors, and you haven’t got rich screaming Hunter Biden! you might want to go back to washing Joe Manchin’s Maserati or detailing Sean Hannity’s private plane.

Hunter Biden has admitted to addiction, and was ready to plead to tax and gun charges. He also lost track of a laptop full of personal information and apparently forgot or never tried to find it. He probably shouldn’t have been anywhere near any kind of “deal” anywhere, especially not one hatched in a country that was, pre-2022 war, judged by the Council of Europe to be the most corrupt country in Europe after Russia.

But there he was, in Ukraine. What exactly was he doing there while his dad was Obama’s veep in 2014? According to the BBC, as nonaligned a news organization as possible, he’s alleged to have in 2014 made $1.2 million a year on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company, and sometime after 2013, earned unspecified money as the founding member of a Chinese money backed private equity firm.

House Republicans say they have - but have not so far shown - bank documents they claim prove Hunter “and other associates” got $20 million from parties in former Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. They are not officially claiming to have proof that any of that alleged money went to Joe Biden. But Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., House Oversight committee chairman, has said then-vice president Biden was "the brand" Hunter sold to enrich the Biden family.

Complaints about an American leader using his “brand” to enrich self and family are, as usual in MAGA times, utter projection. Defendant Trump branded the White House with a cheesy gilt T for four years by failing to divest from his holdings when elected. Remember Junior running off to India to sell Trump condos while daddy was in the White House? Have we forgotten about Republicans, foreign dignitaries and lobbyists booking up the Trump International Hotel in Washington to curry favor with the boss? (Reservations dropped the minute he sold it.)

Besides the laughable Biden brand slam, why should the public care at all about Hunter, or any Presidential relative not actively crime-ing in the White House? Going after Presidential family members to besmirch the leader is effective politics, and Democratic Presidential families have provided plenty of black sheep for the purpose. Bill Clinton had his Roger, a half brother who the Secret Service code-named “Headache” for his shenanigans. While Clinton was governor of Arkansas, Roger spent time in prison for cocaine possession and drug trafficking. In 1995, while his brother was the Leader of the Free World, he was caught out accepting a Rolex and $50k from some Gambino kids who wanted to get a pardon for their imprisoned mob dad.

Jimmy Carter had brother Billy, a drunk who once once urinated on an airport runway in full view of the press and dignitaries and who in 1979, was drinking half a gallon of vodka and whiskey a day.

The big difference between Hunter, Billy and Roger, and former White House Senior Advisor and Presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner, is that none of the first three ever held a top White House position that enabled them to do, say, big foreign policy favors for, say, unelected monarchs with sovereign wealth funds.

In fact, the first three were not in government at all.

Let’s assume for argument’s sake that Republicans are right about Hunter. Adding all of Hunter Biden’s alleged money together barely amounts to $30 million. In Trumpworld, that’s what’s known as Chump Change and a lost opportunity to make a lot more since Hunter’s dad was high in the federal government, which Trump’s father Fred taught his son was a cash cow to be milked and bilked. Not to do so, in Trump parlance, would be leaving money on the table. (For more on this history, see chapter two of my book on the Trump women.)

There is a Trump family member known to have profited in the billions. He has earned comparisons to the tall faceless humanoid character Slenderman because of his eerie not-there-ness and penchant for narrow-fit suits. His spectral mien is possibly connected to childhood with a sociopathic father. In the paternal psychology regard, there are probably not two people better matched for marriage than he and Ivanka.

As a White House advisor, Kushner’s policy failures were consequential, a fail-up case study. Put in charge of acquiring Covid related supplies in 2020, he froze out FEMA and, operating by MBA playbook, brought in financial industry interns to identify politically connected private firms to supply masks and other supplies. As this shock doctrine profit-making experiment floundered, nurses in New York wore garbage bags, and hundreds of thousands were going to die. Eventually, Kushner and the White House decided not to mount a national effort, since Covid was a blue state problem. Congressional investigations into Trump’s Covid response faded as the emergency of the January 6 insurrection took precedence.

Kushner’s other big White House duty was handling Israel and the club of Gulf Arab monarchs who control trillions of dollars in sovereign wealth funds from decades of western fossil fuel addiction. Early in the Trump term, Jared became BFF friendly with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed “chop-chop” bin Salman (MBS). While it’s probably true that MBS would have gotten away with dispatching Jamal Khashoggi no matter what (impunity is one benefit of controlling a ten-zeros wealth fund), Kushner’s friendship certainly didn’t hurt.

Kushner’s signature accomplishments were Saudi and Israel-related. He lobbied to move the US embassy moved to Jerusalem, widely opposed by most of the world, still clinging to the notion of a possible Palestinian state. Second, Kushner takes credit for the Abraham Accords, essentially an American seal of approval on a well-known back-room fact of Middle Eastern life - Israeli hardliners get along pretty well with the Gulf potentates, both preferring autocracy to real democracy, and engaging in abuse of the weak (Yemen, Palestinians, women). Despite the grandiose name, the Accords brought no peace or relief to Yemen or the West Bank.

The Arab potentates were chuckling. In 2018, MBS reportedly bragged that Kushner was "in his pocket." Two billion is pocket change when you’re sitting, as MBS is, on $620B.

Six months after leaving the White House, Kushner acquired $2 billion mostly in the form of investment from MBS’s fund. He then tried to hide it: according to the Washington Post, on the required SEC form to register investment ventures, Kushner listed the money under "Pooled investment vehicles as clients" rather than under "Sovereign wealth funds and foreign official institutions." 

To his credit, Chairman Comer doesn’t seem to possess his party’s immunity to shame. “I don’t disagree with the Democrats and their criticism of the previous administration,” he told the New York Times recently. But he’s not ready to look into Kushner’s Saudi billions, an activity which he agreed would be, in the words of a Times interviewer, “politically unsustainable.”

Last week, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) asked Comer to subpoena Kushner to explain more about the $2 billion. It isn't the first time House Democrats have tried to haul him in for a chat. Last June, then-Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) sent questions to Kushner and his company Affinity “about allegations that Mr. Kushner’s personal financial interests may have improperly influenced U.S. foreign policy during the Trump Administration,” Raskin wrote.

Kushner blew them off.

Comer says Republicans “will continue to follow the money trail and obtain witness testimony to determine whether foreign actors targeted the Bidens, President Biden is compromised or corrupt, and our national security is threatened.”

If you’re worried about foreign actors targeting and influencing family members of American leaders, how do you miss a $2 billion investment?

Americans have been soaking up the Biden crime family claims for years with no pushback from the other side and as 2024 comes around, it’s ratcheting up. But what about Jared Kushner? seems like the obvious and immediate answer to “Hunter Biden!” as a political strategy. But it’s not deployed.

“We have seen this playbook before, they are running the Hillary playbook on Biden,” a frustrated strategist recently told me. “We are just shy of lock him up and the Biden crime family. We are asleep at the wheel. They are literally hammering away at Uncle Joe, who voters consider a good guy, not corrupt. Republicans just want to get to the point where everyone is impeached. It is highly effective, and there is no concerted pushback because the guy with the bullhorn won’t do it.”

Democrat PAC money could be used to buy airtime and make ads to remind voters in swing states about Jared Kushner whenever Hunter Biden is mentioned. No one is doing that, I’m told, because the White House doesn’t want to engage on Hunter. A strategist who disagrees with this said, “The truth is fascism is bigger than Joe and Hunter Biden.”

Related reads

Ukraine Most Corrupt Country in Europe After Russia

BBC on Hunter Biden case

The Trump Women: Part of The Deal

Comer concedes Jared’s ethical problems

Raskin letter to Comer

Comer statement on Biden “brand.”