Best Seller.

A story half the country wants to read.

Once upon a time (February of 2020, to be specific), I wrote the following about Hunter Biden:

Sue Wagner, founding partner and director of BlackRock, one of the most successful financial services companies in the world, is on the Board of Directors of Apple, one of the most successful business enterprises in the history of mankind. She is, by all accounts, a shrewd and accomplished businesswoman.

For her service on the Apple board, she is paid (annually) $100,000 in cash and $250,000 in restricted stock, which vests in February of the following year. Let’s say the stock appreciates 20%, just for easy arithmetic. In a year’s time, her stock would be worth $300,000. And she would have earned the $100,000 in cash. So: $400,000 annual compensation for serving on the Apple board.

Good for her.

Hunter Biden, someone whose knowledge of and experience in the energy business is underwhelming (at best), served on the Board of Directors of Burisma Holdings, one of Ukraine’s largest independent natural gas companies. For his service, he was paid (annually) $600,000 (cash). At the time, his father, Vice President Joe Biden, was the Obama Administration’s point person for Ukraine policy.

There’s no explaining away the contrast. One board position appears (and almost certainly is) well-earned, given Ms. Wagner’s extraordinary success in business. The other appears corrupt, since it is safe to say that the only reason Hunter Biden was paid $50,000 a month to serve on the board of a Ukrainian energy holding company was his last name.

Everything that people hate about Washington — elite self-dealing, insider trading (metaphorically) and unearned income (and all the rest of it) — is all right there, for all to see, in the Hunter Biden Ukraine story.

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I thought the Hunter Biden story would vanish in the winter of 2020 because I couldn’t imagine how Joe Biden could survive three crushing caucus and primary defeats in a row (he finished 4th in the Iowa caucuses, fifth in the New Hampshire primary and lost the Nevada caucuses by a better than 2-to-1 margin to Bernie Sanders) and somehow battle back to win the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.

Wrong again!