Kindly give the Manhattan Contrarian some credit for calling this one correctly at the very earliest stages. On the other hand, this was not a difficult call to make; you had to be either blind or braindead or corrupt or all three not to call it correctly. The category “all three” applies to the entirety of the progressive, Washington and mainstream media blob.

It was September 20, 2019 that the Wall Street Journal reported the existence of a so-called “whistleblower” complaint, asserting that on a telephone call in July of that year, President Trump had “pressured” the new President of Ukraine to investigate allegations of money laundering involving Joe and Hunter Biden. On September 23, 2019, as reported in the New York Post, Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani responded by asserting that some $3 million had been paid to Biden’s son Hunter from Ukraine. Over the next couple of weeks, various journalists (all from the right) put together relatively detailed timelines of the activities of Hunter Biden in Ukraine. (Here is one from Jim Geraghty of National Review on September 30, 2019.) Meanwhile, the “whistleblower” allegations turned into the impeachment inquiry, that continued until it ultimately cratered with Trump’s acquittal in the Senate on February 5, 2020.

By October 6, 2019, I was already ready to make the call, which I did in a post titled “The Bidens: ‘Stone Cold Crooked.’” That post covered in considerable detail the facts as to the Bidens and Ukraine as then known; but really, this was not complicated. Dubious Ukrainian energy companies in the crosshairs of prosecutors do not pay $1 million per year for attendance at two annual board meetings to people with Hunter Biden’s background (no experience in the energy industry) supposedly to get the benefit of their business acumen. It was screamingly obvious that this had to be payment for access or influence or both with respect to Hunter’s dad Joe. For many more Manhattan Contrarian posts on the subject of Biden corruption, particularly as regards Ukraine, go to this composite link and scroll down.

And then, there the matter sat for a year plus. At the outset, Joe Biden decided that his defense was going to be flat denial, combined with refusal to answer any particularized questions, placing complete reliance on his media allies to cover for him. As early as September 21, 2019, speaking to reporters in Iowa, Biden answered a question from Steve Doocy of Fox News with the lines “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” and “everybody’s looked at” the allegations and “there is nothing there!”

The intervening year has seen mostly only a trickle of new information about Biden family corruption, with a new tidbit or two coming out every now and then. For example, it was late October 2019 when information first came out about Hunter’s dubious dealings in Romania. Skip all the way to September 23, 2020, when the Senate Finance and Homeland Security Committee released a Report revealing some $3.5 million in payments in or about 2015 to Hunter Biden from the wife of the Mayor of Moscow, Elena Baturina. At the first presidential debate on September 29, Joe Biden had not changed at all from his strategy of complete stonewall. Confronted by Trump (not the moderator of course) about the $3.5 million from Baturina, Biden just repeated the same thing over and over:  “That’s not true. . . . None of that is true. . . . It’s been discredited. . . . My son did nothing wrong.” But the Senate Committees based their report on wire transfer records that they specifically cited. What about that? No response.

Now, suddenly, in just the past ten days, the trickle of information about Biden corruption has gone to a flow, and then to a flood, and just today to an avalanche. It started on October 14 with the New York Post reporting on emails contained on a laptop left by Hunter at a computer repair shop; and it has accelerated from there. The new information includes not only incriminating emails and other documents, but also extensive indicia of authenticity not previously available, live eyewitness accounts of events contradicting Joe Biden’s preposterous defense, and revelations of widespread previously-concealed dealings in China involving massive sums of money.

Let’s review these revelations, starting on October 14:

• October 14 was the day that the NY Post broke the story of the Hunter Biden laptop. I covered that one the next day. In truth, given that the story of Hunter’s service on the Burisma board was already well-documented, there was not a huge amount of new information on the laptop. But the laptop was significant for three notable things: (1) it contained extensive internal and external indicia of authenticity, such as family photos and texts, let alone there was a store receipt bearing the signature of Hunter; (2) it contained one particular email, highlighted by the Post, from a Burisma executive to Hunter, specifically contradicting Joe’s prior story that he had never discussed Hunter’s foreign business endeavors with his son, and indeed revealing that Joe had not only discussed the endeavors with Hunter but had also met in person with the Burisma executive (from April 17, 2015:  “Dear Hunter, Thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together.” ); and (3) it contained further extensive correspondence from 2017 between Hunter and representatives of China state-owned energy firm CEFC, discussing setting up one or more new deals and allocating equity shares, including, in one May 13, 2017 email “10 held by H for the big guy.” Admittedly that last occurred when Joe was out of public office; but he was clearly expected to run and to be the leading Democratic candidate in 2020.

• And then there followed what is now nearly ten full days of pregnant silence from Biden and his campaign. Were they going to deny the authenticity of the emails on the laptop, or at least of the important ones? Failure to do so promptly would have to be taken by anyone paying attention as an admission of authenticity. But it has not occurred. And at this point, it is not going to occur. Meanwhile, the progressive media, as if in a coordinated effort, all came forth at once with the line that the laptop is “Russian disinformation.” How does that line make even the slightest sense if the authenticity of the materials as communications to or from Hunter Biden is not denied by the Bidens themselves?

• On October 19, Mike Emanuel of Fox News reported that he had tracked down one of the individuals copied on the May 13, 2017 email about the CEFC energy deal, with the reference to “10 held by H for the big guy,” and that that individual “confirmed its authenticity. Sources told Fox News that ‘the big guy’ is a reference to the former vice president.”

• Then two days ago (October 21) the flood gates started to open. That evening, a guy named Tony Bobulinski — identifying himself as a former business partner of Hunter and Joe Biden and also of Joe’s brother Jim Biden — issued a statement about his own role in the 2017 China transactions, specifically focusing on his personal eyewitness observation of the conduct of the Bidens and the ways in which Joe’s involvement contradicted his own previous public statements. The next morning, October 22, the New York Post printed the full text of Bobulinski’s written statement. Go to the link to read the full statement, but here are a few key quotes:

  • I am the recipient of the email published seven days ago by the New York Post which showed a copy to Hunter Biden and Rob Walker. That email is genuine.

  • What I am outlining is fact. I know it is fact because I lived it. I am the CEO of Sinohawk Holdings which was a partnership between the Chinese operating through CEFC/Chairman Ye and the Biden family.

  • Hunter Biden called his dad “the Big Guy” or “my Chairman,” and frequently referenced asking him for his sign-off or advice on various potential deals that we were discussing. I’ve seen Vice President Biden saying he never talked to Hunter about his business. I’ve seen firsthand that that’s not true. . . .

  • I realized the Chinese were not really focused on a healthy financial ROI. They were looking at this as a political or influence investment.

  • I would ask the Biden family to address the American people and outline the facts.

• And then today, the flood turned into an avalanche. It appears that, in addition to his statement, Bobulinski turned over a trove of emails and text messages to the Wall Street Journal. In this morning’s Journal (however, posted online at 7:32 PM last night, before the debate started), Kimberley Strassel has an unusually long column with extensive revelations from the Bobulinski materials. Again you should read the whole thing, but here are some key points:

  • The Biden/CEFC transactions had their genesis in 2015 and 2016, when Joe Biden was still Vice President.

  • From Strassel: Hunter, in his own angry texts, makes clear that his contribution is his name. He rails at Mr. Bobulinski that the CEFC heads are “coming to be MY partner to be partners with the Bidens.” He reminds him “that in this instance only one player holds the trump card and that’s me. May not be fair but it’s the reality because I’m the only one putting an entire family legacy on the line.”

  • There is no question CEFC was buying Hunter for influence.

  • In one text, Hunter says that “my Chairman gave an emphatic NO” to a version of the deal. Mr. Walker, Hunter’s partner, explains in a text to Mr. Bobulinski that when Hunter “said his chairman he was talking about his dad.” This is the same “dad,” of course, who claimed in 2019 to have “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.”

• And finally, at 6:30 this morning, the website RedState posted a 60 page “Intelligence Report” from an organization called Typhoon Investigations. The Report bears a date of October 2, but RedState says that they only received it on Wednesday night. Here is a link to the full Report. The provenance of this Report is not provided in detail, so it should be treated, at least for the moment, with a degree of skepticism. The Report gives a blow-by-blow account of the Bidens’ business dealings in China with Chinese state-owned and controlled entities going back to early 2009, when Joe Biden first took the office of Vice President. RedState has given the Report to a guy named Christopher Balding, an American who has lived in China for nine years teaching at Peking University HSBC School of Business Shenzhan, to comment on the apparent credibility of the document. Balding “notes that he did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016 and will not be voting for him this year.” From Balding:

  • I did not write the report and I am not responsible for the report. I have gone over the report with a fine-tooth comb and can find nothing factually wrong with the report. Everything is cited and documented. Arguably the only weakness is that we do not have internal emails between Chinese players or the Chinese and Bidens that would make explicit what the links clearly imply.

  • Beginning just before Joe Biden’s ascendancy to the Vice Presidency, Hunter Biden was traveling to Beijing meeting with Chinese financial institutions and political figures [who] would ultimately become his investors. Finalized in 2013, the investment partnership included money from the Chinese government, social security, and major state-owned banks a veritable who’s who of Chinese state finance. It is not simply the state money that should cause concern but the structures and deals that took place.

  • The entire arrangement speaks to Chinese state interests. Meetings were held at locations that in China speak to the welcoming of foreign dignitaries or state to state relations. The Chinese organizations surrounding Hunter Biden are known intelligence and influence operatives to the United States government.

•  Among the revelations in the Report (this is a small sample):

  • The state-owned Bank of China, through subsidiary companies, is the majority owner of Hunter Biden’s venture capital firm, BHR

  • Hunter Biden still owns a 10% share of BHR, (conservatively) estimated value $50 million

  • Hunter Biden served on the board of Heinz and Archer’s Rosemont Realty, a large US-based commercial real estate firm that was then sold to a Chinese company.

• Balding’s conclusion:

  • [T]he Biden links worry me profoundly. Whether Joe Biden personally knew the details, . . . it is simply political malpractice to not be aware of the details of these financial arrangements. These documentable financial links simply cannot be wished away.

Anyway, now that the avalanche is under way, I fully expect it to continue at least through the election. When people like Bobulinski — ex-business partner of the Bidens — decide that they can’t keep silent any more, there is nothing to stop the snowballing.

Meanwhile, these subjects came up at last night’s debate, of course pressed by Trump rather than by the moderator. Trump in particular pressed as to the $3.5 million from Elena Baturina, the Burisma directorship, and the 2017 China revelations. As always, Biden avoided responding in any specifics. He repeated the mantra of “fifty people have looked into that and found nothing,” and then added (as to the recent New York Post revelations) that they are “Russian disinformation.” Yes, emails as to which he is in a position to know the authenticity and can’t deny it are supposedly “Russian disinformation.” How anyone can buy into this, I cannot understand.

So, according to highly credible concrete evidence that he cannot dispute, our presidential candidate who is leading in the polls, and who, if elected, will be in charge of our nation’s security, is bought and paid for by our two most significant geopolitical adversaries, China and Russia. Holy sh-t!