by Michael Shellenberger at X ThreadReader via PUBLIC
Mind-blowing. In 2014, VP Biden attacked corrupt developer in Romania who owned land around US embassy. In 2015, Hunter goes to work for the corrupt developer, lobbies US ambassador to pressure Romanians to drop case, then proposes to settle case by cutting in his China client
This appears to have been a straight-up mob-style shakedown by the Biden family done under the auspices of Obama foreign policy and in a way the directly jeopardized US national security.
The lawyers for Hunter’s corrupt developer client first threatened to jeopardize the land upon which the embassy sat, and then proposed a deal whereby prosecutors dropped the case in exchange for the corrupt developer selling nearly half his stake to a state-owned Chinese energy company, that was also Hunter’s client.
Wait wait it gets worse:
— “The deal was among several projects [!] in different parts of the world for which the joint venture discussed seeking [Chinese state owned] CEFC investment.”
— Hunter “Biden was involved in discussions about the structure of the joint venture, as well as the proposed purchase of the Bucharest land and the legal defense of Mr. Popoviciu.”
This means that the Biden family’s shakedown strategy was truly global and pursued hand-in-glove with the Chinese. Here’s background on their grift from the reporter who wrote one of the best books on the topic:
Ben Schreckinger is an old-fashioned investigative journalist with Politico who wrote the best book on Joe Biden. Schreckinger’s book is called, simply, The Bidens. Hachette published the book in 2021. “It got a fair amount of attention in the conservative press,” he told me… pic.twitter.com/PTq6emYR4Y
— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) January 19, 2025
Shortly after this, the CIA and FBI created the Russia collusion hoax to frame Trump, in part to distract from the Clinton influence peddling scheme, and in part to hurt Trump.
This newly unearthed scandal raises the question of whether another goal was to distract from the Biden influence peddling scheme.
Either way it’s clear is that the Obama administration housed two separate sprawling influence peddling operations, covered them up, and accused Trump of doing what Clinton and Biden were plainly and flagrantly guilty of.
What continues to amaze me is just how many people knew about or participated in one or more of those corruption scandals, which were occurring more or less in plain sight, underscoring the essential role of the IC and media in running information operations to focus public attention on non-evidence of Russia collusion to distract from the obvious real world corruption that voters were growing increasing concerned over.
We sometimes think of Hillary and Biden’s corruption as separate from the Russia Collusion hoax, but the full context reveals something even more sinister. Hillary as Sec of State approved uranium imports from Russia in exchange for $500k for her husband, ostensibly for a speech, and millions more for their foundation, from oligarchs linked to Putin. Biden worked, or promised to work, various regulatory, legal, and diplomatic levers for Chinese oligarchs, directly controlled by the state, through his son. All of this was already getting publicity and alarming voters, as the Clinton campaign team realized in late 2015. And so a Clinton aide, who worked at CIA intermediary organization, proposed a psyop to protect her corruption onto Trump. Then, the CIA and FBI spied upon and entrapped Trump aides to get surveillance warrants to create a disinformation campaign suggesting Trump was colluding with the Russians to steal the election.
The IC-led disinformation effort never stopped. In 2020, the FBI and its intermediary organization, Aspen Institute, orchestrated an elaborate disinformation campaign to brainwash journalists and social media executives about the Hunter Biden laptop.
The result was the now-famous IC and media effort to frame the laptop as a result of Russian misinformation. That included the strenuous efforts by “former” FBI officials inside of Facebook and Twitter to censor the story, which we would never have known about had @elonmusk opened up the files to @mtaibbi and @bariweiss who invited me in to the project.
I saw the emails relating to the Aspen Institute information operation and realized that there was more to the story than anyone knew. At the time, I knew very little about either the Russia collusion hoax or the vast influence-peddling operations of Clinton and Biden. Understanding them helped it all make much more sense.
x.com/shellenberger/…
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