NLETTER

Nolan Out Loud: Biden must address Hunter emails

Nolan Finley
The Detroit News
In this Oct. 11, 2012, file photo, Hunter Biden waits for the start of the his father's, Vice President Joe Biden's, debate at Centre College in Danville, Ky. In 2014, then-Vice President Joe Biden was at the forefront of American diplomatic efforts to support Ukraine's fragile democratic government as it sought to fend off Russian aggression and root out corruption. So it raised eyebrows when Biden's son Hunter was hired by a Ukrainian gas company. President Donald Trump prodded Ukraine's president to help him investigate any corruption related to Joe Biden, now one of the top Democrats seeking to defeat Trump in 2020.

The biggest story you're likely to never see is the New York Post's discovery of emails allegedly between Hunter Biden and a top executive of a Ukrainian firm that paid the former vice president's son $50,000 a month to sit on its board.

The emails reportedly were pulled from a laptop abandoned at a  repair shop.

The emails are allegedly from Vadym Pozharsky, an adviser to the board of the Burisma energy company and thank Hunter Biden for arranging a meeting with his father in 2015. A year later, Vice President Biden pressured the Ukrainian government to fire a prosecutor investigating Burisma.

The significance is that Biden denied ever speaking with his son about Burisma or using his office to help his Hunter's foreign business dealings. 

There's surprisingly little interest beyond the Post in telling the story. In fact, there's a concerted effort to quash the report. Facebook restricted access to posts about the revelation, citing the inability to verify the accuracy.

That'd be a fine explanation, except Facebook has not taken the same stance on a series of anonymously sourced stories harmful to President Donald Trump that have conveniently popped up in the run-up to the election.

Twitter took the extraordinary step of freezing the account of White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany after she retweeted the Post story. She was told she was spreading dangerous information. Dangerous to Biden, but info voters out to see. 

The allegations that Joe Biden used his office to enrich his son should have been thoroughly investigated when they were raised a year or more ago. They still should be. And instead of covering for him, the press should be demanding he address the allegations. 

Over inflating SCOTUS

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett continues to shine in her Senate confirmation hearings, while Democrats struggle to find any chinks in her legal armor. Filling a Supreme Court vacancy should not be a life-or-death matter. It's become that way because our political system doesn't work. Too many culture war issues that should be settled by a Congress working collaboratively end up being punted to the justices. See my column today.

ETC.

Nancy Pelosi wants to invoke the 25th Amendment to declare Donald Trump incompetent to hold office. The House Speaker may be a candidate for a competency hearing herself. She accused the leftist CNN of being a mouthpiece for the Trump administration after her incoherent and testy interview with host Wolf Blitzer.

Does sexual preference and sexual orientation mean the same thing? They did until this week, when Amy Coney Barrett use of sexual preference brought accusations that she was implying a choice. But no one peeped when Joe Biden said the same thing a few weeks ago, or when LGBQT activists recently used the phrase. 

Most of what I write is only available with a premium content subscription. Sign up here: 

Twitter: @NolanFinleyDN

Sign up for the Nolan Out Loud morning report at detroitnews.com/newsletters.

Watch Finley on DPTV’s “One Detroit” at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays.