A cynic might start to piece together these stories and come to the conclusion that there's actually plenty of evidence the president had created the 'illusion' of access to the White House on his son's behalf...

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Joe Biden defenders have been on a wild ride this past year. It began with them arguing that the president knew absolutely nothing about his family's influence-peddling business to arguing that it's no big deal that Chicom wire payoffs happen to have Biden's home address listed on them.

The quality of the excuses, unsurprisingly, has been deteriorating rapidly. They largely entail repeating the words "no" and "evidence" in a perpetual loop. But, this week, when James Comer released financial records of Hunter Biden receiving two wire transfers totaling $260,000 in 2019 from Beijing with the president's Delaware home listed as the beneficiary address, the White House jumped into action.

"Imagine them arguing that, if someone stayed at their parents' house during the pandemic, listed it as their permanent address for work, and got a paycheck, the parents somehow also worked for the employer," wrote White House spokesman Ian Sams. "It's bananas. Yet this is what extreme House Republicans have sunken to."

Speaking of bananas, the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the United States wasn't reported until January 2020, and shutdowns were still a year away when Hunter Biden used his dad's house as a beneficiary address on a wire payment. According to Hunter's memoir, he was living in Los Angeles with his new wife at the time.

Of course, even if the pandemic had been raging by summer 2019, Hunter Biden wasn't a college student visiting home; he was a 49-year-old who had the wherewithal to craft numerous international million-dollar deals – not to mention allegedly evade taxes, buy firearms illegally, and score crack and prostitutes. Why would Hunter need to stay at Daddy's house? Why do they keep talking about this grown man as if he's a toddler? For God's sake, this is an accomplished artist whose work goes for upwards of a million dollars.

And it wasn't a "paycheck," but a wire transfer from a Chicom investment firm that his father repeatedly lied about to the American people.

In an October 2019 presidential debate, Joe Biden incredulously claimed that Hunter never benefited from Chinese interests – "My son has not made money in terms of this thing about, what are you talking about, China." It was weird, even then, that Biden could make such an assertion with confidence, considering that not long before he had claimed to "never" have spoken to Hunter about his "overseas business dealings."

Perhaps one day the president will be asked by the political media why he made this claim, and whether he knew his address was being used on Biden Inc. paperwork at the time. And while they're at it, they could ask him whether he was at his Wilmington house in 2017 when his son threatened his Chinese partner, Henry Zhao, with the words, "I am sitting here with my father."

Let's also remember that not only did Joe Biden fly his son to Beijing aboard Air Force Two during an official visit in 2013 to meet with potential investors, but the vice president met Jonathan Li, whose name is on the 2019 wire transfer, for coffee. The two would talk again on the phone – probably just some "casual conversations" or "niceties about the weather." Joe was even kind enough to write college recommendation letters for his son and daughter.

It's a really weird coincidence that the same guy happens to have Joe Biden's address on a wire transfer. A cynic might start to piece together these stories and come to the conclusion that there's actually plenty of evidence the president had created the "illusion" of access to the White House on his son's behalf – at the very least, enriching his entire family. 

David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books – the most recent, "Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent." His work has appeared in National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Reason, New York Post and numerous other publications. 

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