Let us imagine for a moment that President Donald Trump designated Vice President Mike Pence as his point man on nuclear negotiations with Iran. Pence had to travel to Tehran on numerous occasions. As part of the final deal he negotiated, an Iranian government official to be designated by the ayatollahs will, at a time to be determined later, seriously consider discussing some issues relating to uranium enrichment.
In a diplomatic tour de force, let’s say Pence got the Iranians to admit some of their nuclear facilities might possibly be subject to future inspections, provided the two sides could, as part of a friendly future dialogue, agree on which Iranian facilities are nuclear facilities and which of those nuclear facilities are sufficiently nuclear that inspections would be performed, with six month’s advance notice. Let’s further say that Tehran agreed to let inspectors be drawn not just from Iran’s own military and police, but also from a list of technical experts provided by Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea, and would only have access to nonmilitary facilities.
In exchange for the ayatollahs’ ironclad commitment to consider engaging in future discussions at a forum acceptable to Iran about uranium enrichment, Pence promised that the United States would immediately lift all sanctions on Iran, ship several planeloads of brand-new, crisp $100 bills to Tehran, and would provide $1 billion in U.S. tax dollars to relieve the suffering of veterans of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps returning from the wars in Syria and Yemen.
Then let’s imagine that upon his return home, Mike Pence was hailed as a hero and as a diplomat of unrivaled skill, having brought back from Tehran a document carrying the all-important signature of Ayatollah Abdulkhalil Khorramshami, the assistant to Ayatollah Abdulreza Mesri, the second deputy of the speaker of Iran’s Islamic Consultative Assembly. After proudly waving the document with Khorramshami’s signature in the air upon stepping off Air Force Two, Pence would then be treated to a ticker-tape parade in New York. Next, the vice president makes the rounds of all the TV talk shows, explaining to his adoring hosts how his negotiating talents and two years of perseverance ultimately paid off in pulling off this key diplomatic coup for America and the entire civilized world.
In an entirely unrelated development, let’s suppose news comes to light that two years earlier, the National Iranian Oil Company hired Charlotte Pence, the now-26-year-old daughter of Vice President Pence, to serve on its board of directors. As a company director, Charlotte Pence’s responsibility would be to provide management and legal insight regarding oil and gas development in the Persian Gulf to Iranian ayatollahs serving on the company board.
Young Ms. Pence was paid a grand total of $3 million, in increments of $166,000 per month, wired to a bank account set up in the name of a consulting company she owns. Entirely coincidentally, it turns out Ms. Pence often provided her valuable management and legal guidance to the National Iranian Oil Company while her father (again, in a completely unrelated development) was in town negotiating with different ayatollahs about nuclear non-proliferation issues.
It also comes to light that Charlotte Pence had exactly zero experience in the oil or gas industry prior to being hired as a board member. It is similarly unclear what her qualifications were for providing legal advice to anyone, much less to a foreign oil company in a country she had never been to before, and whose language (Farsi) she does not speak. Odder still, she is not a lawyer. Nothing on her LinkedIn bio indicates any knowledge of oil and gas-related legal issues, or, for that matter, any issues involving oil companies. Her entire business experience had to do with writing children’s books and making short documentaries, none of which even mentioned oil or gas.
In response to press inquiries, Vice President Pence insists that he had never spoken to his daughter about her business activities, not even when they were flying to Tehran together Air Force Two. The vice president categorically rejected any suggestion that any quid pro quo was involved.
In response to a question of whether this arrangement might at least give rise to an appearance of a conflict of interest, he responds feistily with a forceful and fully convincing denial. “I give you my word as a Pence,” he explained angrily, his left eye filling with blood, “that there is absolutely nothing improper here. No joke! The fact of the matter is, my daughter and I are not even closely related, and I had absolutely no idea she was in the Iranian oil and gas business. And that’s the God’s honest truth!”
When pressed further, Vice President Pence brought up the inspirational example of Franklin Roosevelt addressing the nation on television in 1933, and added that although his memory was not as good as Chief Justice John Roberts’, there is no reason to think that he was going nuts, because he often listens to record players to help his memory. The vice president then rejected the idea that he said dumb things because he is dumb, and quickly pivoted to touting the expected economic benefits of the Iran nuclear deal, explaining how 750 million American women will receive gainful employment due to increased global trade in enriched uranium.
What would congressional Democrats do, should they become aware of all this?
The answer to that question seems limited only by your imagination. Can you imagine the Democrats’ shrieks of outrage? Can you imagine their howls of righteous fury? Can you imagine the accusations of treason? Can you imagine how many congressional committees would be lining up to investigate this sordid affair? Can you imagine the hysterics of every media outlet in the country? Can you imagine how many subpoenas demanding documents and witness appearances would be flying out the door? The high-speed printers on Capitol Hill would run out of paper in no time, and they’d need to kill half of the Amazon rainforest for the subpoenas alone.
Nancy Pelosi would be holding daily press conferences in front of the American flag, finding ever more creative ways to accuse Pence of bribery and treason. Every Democratic chairman of every congressional committee, from judiciary to agriculture, would insist on a role in the impeachment proceedings. The activist Left would smell blood in the water. Demonstrations demanding the impeachment of Pence would rage in the streets of Washington. Hearings would be held, each Democratic congressperson competing against all his colleagues in vitriolically branding Pence a traitor, a disgrace, a corrupt pol and an all-around awful human being who sold out his country while enriching his family.
And they would be right! A man who uses his high public office to enrich his relatives deserves the highest opprobrium. Impeachment is the least that our congressional representatives can do to him, to send a strong message that such behavior in a vice president is completely unacceptable.
The good news is, it is not too late for congressional Democrats, because we are now looking at this exact situation.
Joseph R. Biden, who insists everyone refer to him as “Mr. Vice President,” has blatantly used his high public office for years to enrich his family. Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s dunce of a son, was mysteriously hired in 2014 to serve on the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian-Russian gas company—right when Obama made Joe Biden his point man on Ukraine.
Hunter Biden knows nothing about Ukraine. Hunter Biden does not speak a word of Ukrainian. Hunter Biden knows nothing about the oil and gas business, much less about the oil and gas business on a different continent. The ostensible reason for his hiring was that Hunter Biden provided advice on legal-related matters—yet there is not a shred of evidence that Hunter Biden has even one scintilla of knowledge or experience in oil and gas law. There is no evidence that the dopey Hunter Biden even knows where oil and gas come from in the first place.
Hunter Biden has a law degree (at least on paper), though if he ever successfully practiced law, there is no evidence of it that I could find. Hunter Biden got his $3 million apparently for doing exactly nothing while his dad, Vice President Joe Biden, was Obama’s point man deciding when and how Ukraine would get U.S. aid.
If Mike Pence, in the made-up story above, would deserve impeachment (and he would! How could a monster like that stay even one day longer in public office?), then how can we possibly justify Joe Biden walking away scot-free? He should not—he must not—and the fact that he is now out of office is no impediment to justice. Joe Biden can still be impeached. That Biden continues to call himself “vice president” is a continuing travesty—and only impeachment can put an end to it.
Democrats, let me be the first principled conservative to call for impeachment.
It is high time to impeach former Vice President Joseph Robinette Biden for corruption, malfeasance, treason and disgraceful conduct while in office.
(My apologies to Charlotte Pence for using her as a prop in this piece—in real life, she is, from what I gather, a charming, talented, and accomplished young woman.)