Some Insights Into Building a Consultancy Focused on Washington, D.C., Related to Hunter Biden

Like the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon, we are back to the simple questions of what did the president know and when did he know it?

Back in late 2006 when my family was looking to get out of Washington, D.C., my then wife received a job offer from an Ohio company that made sense for her to take. At the time, I had left the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as the Policy and Operational Counselor to Deputy Secretary Michael Jackson in May 2006 and was serving as the Director of Homeland Security for Lockheed Martin Corporation. Upon moving to Ohio, I didn’t have a job so launched a national security consultancy, Provisum Strategies, hoping to leverage my experience and my contacts still at DHS. I knew it wouldn’t be easy given that I resided in Ohio because most companies looking to secure work from the federal government rightfully presume that their former senior official consultants need to be in Washington to ensure they are in the bubble where information and access flow.

Thankfully, throughout 2007 and 2008 I managed to secure a half dozen clients who were willing to overlook my Midwest location because I traveled to Washington frequently and had high-level former colleagues at both DHS and The White House. Plus, with huge contracts being bid by DHS for border security, emergency management, the Coast Guard, and other key DHS functions, I possessed lots of insights that could help win those contracts. Then, I learned a tough lesson about how Washington works. Almost immediately after the 2008 presidential election when Barack Obama defeated John McCain, my clients began disappearing. As I realized, they rightfully decided that with the change in presidential administrations, my access via former colleagues would come to a screeching halt, as those allies would be replaced en masse by Obama Administration political appointees who wouldn’t answer my telephone calls or emails. The Obama Administration also would push other priorities of which I would possess no information. Thus, if my clients wanted help in navigating Washington, they would have to hire former Democrat administration appointees who knew or were friends with the incoming Obama Administration appointees. 

By the end of 2009, my consultancy was largely on life support.

I share this story because I think it helps for those outside of Washington to fully grasp the Biden Family's selling of access (or the appearance of access if you are on the Left). In my defense (and not to toot my own horn), unlike Hunter Biden, I had spent over two years at DHS in roles that provided me with enormous amounts of knowledge, experience, and insights that I could bring to bear for my consulting clients, including lessons learned from the response to Hurricane Katrina and the July 2005 London Tube Bombing. In addition to providing advice to the Deputy Secretary and Secretary on all of the issues facing DHS, I had led DHS’s efforts to allocate terrorism funding by leveraging risk, to develop a National Preparedness Goal, and to test international, federal, state, and local governments' abilities to respond to a terrorist attack. I also represented DHS at bilateral counterterrorism exchanges with the United Kingdom and Israel, as well as speaking for DHS at NATO Headquarters. After leaving DHS, I joined both The Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute where I became one of the most published experts on national security issues, including on immigration and disaster response; wrote three books on homeland security and federalism; and taught a course on terrorism for five quarters in the International Relations Department at The Ohio State University. Of critical importance in contrast to Hunter, not one of my clients hired me for an issue in which I was NOT a subject matter expert.

Hunter had little to no similar credentials. The best example of the Biden Family grift, which tracks the rise and fall of my consultancy, is Hunter’s fee from Ukrainian energy company, Burisma. When Joe Biden was the Vice President in charge of the Obama Administration policy on Ukraine, Hunter managed to secure a monthly consulting fee from Burisma of $83,333 per month, which was far in excess of what any other Burisma board member other than Hunter’s partner, Devon Archer, was being paid at the time. Hunter possessed no subject matter knowledge on energy issues. Within months, however, of Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016, Burisma cut Hunter's (and Devon’s) fee by 50%. 

Why would Burisma have done that? Obviously, with the change from a Democrat Administration to a Republican Administration, Hunter's (and Devon’s) access to political appointees went from his father the Vice President and all of the people within the Obama Administration that inherently knew they had to accept calls from Hunter to no one (except perhaps lower level career staff who don’t matter). To put it bluntly, beginning in 2017 with Joe now a retired politician, Hunter literally no longer had the one thing he could offer his clients or potential clients: access to Joe or influence via using Joe’s name within the Executive Branch. The Bidens knew how to game the system. As Politico reported, "In the early 2000s, before working with his uncle, Hunter had opened a lobbying practice that landed clients with interests that overlapped with Joe’s [U.S. Senate] committee assignments and legislative priorities.” This move foreshadowed the far more aggressive practices that happened following Joe’s election as Vice President.

Take a minute to closely review this timeline developed by the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability based on the documents obtained thus far. Notice that Hunter’s success in getting clients largely goes from 2009 (Joe becomes Vice President) to mid-2017 (Joe’s tenure is over). On July 30, 2017, Hunter in desperation invokes not just Joe, but critically “every person he [Joe] knows” to get the Communist government tied CEFC to send Hunter money. Hunter wrote:  "I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction.” Not one of my clients would ever have tolerate me talking to them like that. Not one.

Moreover, notice the near lack of any new clients thereafter. The biggest deal from Joe’s vice presidency with CEFC imploded by the end of 2018. The grift was officially over. 

Keep in mind, at no point has anyone told us what exactly Hunter did for his various clients to earn fees far in excess of what most D.C. insiders make for similar roles, including former Cabinet officers who have a heck of a lot more to offer than Hunter. To the surprise of many, just months after the CEFC deal terminates, Joe announced he was running for the presidency for the third time in April 2019. Thereafter, conservative media consistently questioned Joe about his role with Hunter’s consulting businesses in which every client appeared to be from a corrupt country in which Joe had played a pivotal role for the Obama Administration. Trump famously did during one of their debates, only to be shut down by biased moderator Chris Wallace. Was Joe’s candidacy driven by the Biden Family’s need to reinvigorate Hunter’s financially lucrative ability to snare foreign clients? Keep in mind, as late as 2009 just before becoming Vice President, Joe reported that he was the "least wealthy administration figure...whose net worth is estimated at just $27,012.” 

As I’ve said before, sometimes what didn’t happen is equally revealing to what did happen. On that point, to date, I’m not aware of a single Fortune 500 company that hired Hunter for any purpose from 2009 to today. Doesn’t that strike you as odd? I mean if Hunter was so good at what he did for his clients that Burisma was willing to pay him $83,333 per month and CEFC gave him millions, he should have been vacuuming up Fortune 500 clients. The reason that didn’t happen, of course, is because those companies would have known of Hunter’s troubled personal history and, more importantly, they all would have possessed sophisticated regulatory and compliance departments well-versed in the regulatory no-nos involved in doing business in Washington. With Hunter not being registered as a lobbyists and not wanting to be registered as such, along with the detailed paperwork involved with any contact he would have with Joe and the Obama Administration, no Fortune 500 company would have risked having Hunter on their team. Thus, Hunter zeroed in on foreign countries and their companies which didn’t adhere to the same level of transparency and accountability and likely lacked the Washington insider knowledge to know Hunter was fleecing them, except in the case of Burisma in which they bluntly demanded and got action to protect the CEO from the Ukraine prosecutor’s office. Burisma is THE consummate example of how a quid-pro-quo deal works. 

Law Professor Jonathan Turley recently put all of Hunter’s and James’s activities in the right framework. Turley wrote in “The Grifter Defense: The Bidens Move to Embrace Influence Peddling With a Twist”:

The problem, of course, is that influence peddling is a form of corruption. Indeed, it is a form of corruption that is so damaging to good government that the United States has pushed global agreements to ban influence peddling in other countries.

The question is whether Joe Biden knew about the influence peddling of his brothers and his son. If so, he actively assisted his family in acquiring millions to influence him on public policy or legislation. His family was effectively marketing time shares in a senator, a vice president and now a president. 

Whether or not Biden delivered, the family business corrupted the functions of government by converting offices into types of commodities. That is the case regardless of whether or not they delivered. It is akin to an extortionist taking money without any intent to follow through on threats of disclosure or use of damaging material. Even in today’s willfully blind politics, every voter should be able to agree on two simple facts.

First, influence peddling is corruption long opposed by the government and denounced by both parties.

Second, if the president knew that his son and uncles were using him for influence peddling, Joe Biden is also corrupt.

That is why it comes down to knowledge. Under federal case law, money and gifts going to one’s family is often treated as a benefit for the purposes of corruption or bribery. 

So, like the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon, we are back to the simple questions of what did the president know and when did he know it? The sheer volume of evidence so far indicates that Joe knew what Hunter and James were doing and he knew it throughout the time when they were doing it. As Turley alludes, Joe is corrupt and, worse, compromised when it comes to some of our worst enemies.

P.S. Here is a thought exercise based off of the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to bar Trump from the Republican Primary: Joe Biden was in the Oval Office for the infamous January 5, 2017, meeting (conveniently memoralized CYA style above by Susan Rice just minutes after Trump was sworn in) in which the Russia hoax got embedded in the federal government aimed at taking POTUS-elect Donald Trump down. Using the Colorado Supreme Court's logic, could state courts not find Biden engaged in insurrection/rebellion and bar him from their 2024 ballots? For the record, I think this action would be unconstitutional, BUT far more evidence exists against scores of Democrats who pushed various hoaxes against Trump TO TAKE HIM OUT that they engaged in insurrection/rebellion barring THEM from holding offices in the federal government going forward. This group includes: Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Susan Rice, Jim Comey, John Brennan, James Clapper, Nancy Pelosi, Sally Yates, Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page, Peter Strzok, countless media figures, many Deep Staters, Andrew Weissmann, and Michael Sussman. The point is if the Left wants to take this path, use of it by the Right in our ever ratcheting up tits-for-tats era will impact many of the Left's key players who arguably did engage in insurrection/rebellion against a sitting president from 2017 to 2021. Is it time for the Right to fight back no holds barred?