Source: Jonathan Turley
I previously wrote a column on the one year anniversary of the Hunter Biden laptop story that marveled at the success of the Biden family in making the scandal vanish before that 2020 election. It was analogized to Houdini making his 10,000-pound elephant Jennie disappear in his act. The Biden trick however occurred live before an audience of millions. Now, in an encore, a new major story on Biden’s Chinese dealings has surfaced. Once again, poof!
The media has made the story disappear except for a couple of the usual outlets. Even with the New York Times reporting on the story, the disclosure of Biden’s role in securing one of the world’s largest cobalt mines for China (a key component to electric battery production) has been ignored by the major networks and many other print outlets. Once again, ABC. NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and other media just cannot see the elephant.
What is most amazing about this continuing trick is that the story has all of the elements that the media longed to confirm during the Trump Administration on the financial dealings of the Trump children. The son of the President was involved in a successful effort to handover a strategically vital natural resource to the Chinese that would guarantee their dominance in one of the most important new industries of the “Green economy.” This occurred during a period when Hunter Biden and his uncle were accused of running a global influence peddling operation with foreign powers that cashed in on the Vice Presidency of Joe Biden. Then there is the fact that the story appears to contradict denials of continuing ownership in such foreign interests by the Bidens.
Finally, there is the fact that this windfall from the Chinese occurred in a field that Hunter Biden knew nothing about (much like his work on the board of the Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma) and he was, by his own description, a hopeless addict. In his recent book, Hunter admits that he was a crack addict and alcoholic all the way up to the start of his father’s presidential campaign — in his words, “Drinking a quart of vodka a day by yourself in a room is absolutely, completely debilitating,” as well as “smoking crack around the clock.”
This elephant is truly difficult to unsee.
Hunter Biden established the firm Bohai Harvest RST (BHR) Equity Investment Fund Management Company with a few American and Chinese partners in 2013. He and his American associates controlled 30 percent of the Shanghai-based operation and served on the board. They then put together the purchase of the Congo cobalt and copper mine transfer from American company Freeport-McMoRan to China Molybdenum for the sum of $2.65 billion.
The Tenke Fungurume mine was considered a human rights nightmare. The Congolese military reportedly reduced workers to virtual slaves, torched homes, and killed dissenters. Amnesty International spokeswoman Sarah Jackson denounced “the long history of excessive use of force … unlawful killings.”
However, there was money to be made and Hunter Biden was there to lend the Biden name to the enterprise. BHR served as a minority stakeholder to buy out around $1.14 billion of shares from Lundin Mining of Canada, a partial owner of the mine. China Molybdenum then bought BHR’s shares two years later to give it 80% of ownership of the mine and control of the vital natural resources.
Biden controlled 10 percent of BHR through Skaneateles LLC but his lawyer reportedly insisted that, as of April 2020, he no longer had such interests in this foreign company. That may be untrue, according to the media reports. Chinese business records reviewed by Fox News in April 2021 allegedly show that Hunter Biden continued to hold a 10% stake.
If true, it means that through the election, Hunter Biden was still receiving money from a variety of companies with close ties to the Chinese, Russian, and Ukrainian governments. In this case, his alleged influence peddling was used to deliver a huge strategic advantage to the Chinese in the very area of electric cars that his father was making an American investment priority.
Of course, this is simply not the type of scoop that has drawn most of the media coverage.
None of these facts, however, can force the media to see the elephant. The key to the trick was involving the media in the original trick is that it invests reporters in the illusion. It is like calling audience members to the stage to assist in the performance. Reporters have to insist that there was nothing to see or they have to admit to being part of the original deception. The media cannot see the elephant without the public seeing something about the media in its past efforts to conceal it.
