As Biden scandal marches toward impeachment, what Obama knew and when looms large

In the final days of the Obama presidency, trusted aide Valerie Jarrett made a boast that has aged like spoiled milk.

“The president prides himself on the fact that his administration hasn’t had a scandal and he hasn’t done something to embarrass himself,” Jarrett declared on national television.

Ironically, the president that Jarrett would later to go work for – Joe Biden – has revealed a jaw-dropping pattern of secret emails with fake account names, weaponized the U.S. Department of Justice against political foes, and entanglement with tens of millions of dollars in foreign money and other ethical conflicts.

The steady stream of tawdry revelations from Biden’s vice presidential years makes clear it wasn’t just Hillary Clinton and her husband that sought to become richer through the Obama years. When elected vice president, earned roughly $230,000 a year. By the time he left the Blair House, Forbes and others estimated his current net worth as $9 million. 

The probe of Hunter Biden’s foreign exploits has exposed hard evidence of some complicity by his father and prompted talks of impeachment. News reports say Hunter Biden put his father on speakerphone during business meetings about 20 times," although his supporters such as Rep. Dan Goldman, (D-N.Y.) told reporters that "they never once spoke about any business dealings.”

The new evidence and contradictory statements from Biden about his tenure as Vice President has created a new question for congressional investigators.

What did Barack Obama know and when did he know it?

“I think that one question I have is, I wonder what President Obama knew about his vice president's corrupt business schemes with his son,” House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer told Just the News last week.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has gone further, suggesting that Congress expand its probe to the pattern of corruption now apparent inside the Obama administration. That administration launched a bogus Russia collusion probe against Donald Trump, used the Clinton Foundation to raise money from interests with business before the State Department, and had a vice president whose son solicited business from interests who had business before his father.

“All of this is occurring while Obama's president,” Gingrich told the "John Solomon Reports" podcast.

“None of this could have happened without his active knowledge" Gingrich said. "It's just not possible. So what you have is Obama weaponizing the Justice Department, breaking down the rule of law, establishing a defense for any left winger who wants to be corrupt, and at the same time, using the government to launch attacks on Donald Trump, because they're so frightened of him."

“And I think it's the totality of this, which is going to have to be investigated. And it's vastly more we're going to discover that there's an entire system of corruption, lawlessness, and weaponization that is far beyond Joe Biden,” Gingrich added.

Comer said his congressional investigators believe Hunter Biden became more audacious in the pursuit of foreign money when it became clear his father wouldn’t run for president in 2016, yielding to Hillary Clinton as the Democratic Party nominee.

“He (Joe Biden) really had no role in the Obama administration until the very end, until he agreed not to run against Hillary Clinton to let Hillary Clinton be the chosen one,” Comer told the "Just the News, No Noise" television show.

“And that's when he suddenly wanted to be a foreign policy expert in all the corrupt countries around the world,” Comer added. “Well, now we know why he was profiting off of that his family was profiting off of that. And he was using his son Hunter, as the front man for that.”

Barack Obama had his share of traditional government controversies: the "Fast & Furious"  gun-running scandal, the Benghazi tragedy in 2012 and the IRS targeting of conservative nonprofits.

But the breadth of use of private emails with pseudonyms, the pursuit and solicitation of foreign money by top officials and the weaponization of government have only come into clearer focus since Obama left office in January 2017. Here are some of the details that most trouble investigators as they weigh a possible impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden.

Private Emails Under Fake Names:

Hillary Clinton’s email server scandal (the server was secretly hidden in a closet in her Chappaqua, N.Y. home) is now well written into the annals of history. That server contained highly sensitive and classified emails. Her team destroyed some of the evidence with a memory-wiping program called "Bleach Bit" and took hammers to computers and cellphones. She dodged prosecution with the help of then-FBI Director James Comey, who critics said "wrongly usurped the power of prosecutors" by declining to bring charges. The DOJ’s internal watchdog later said Comey's running interference for Clinton was wrong, calling his actions "extraordinary and insubordinate." 

Last week, a Freedom of Information Act filed by Just the News and the Southeastern Legal Foundation revealed the National Archive has 5,400 emails under three Joe Biden pseudonym accounts, the first concrete evidence the current president used private email for government business. The Archives is refusing to release the emails, prompting a further lawsuit.

At least two emails obtained by Just the News reveal the private accounts were used to transmit sensitive but non-classified information to Hunter Biden on at least two occasions: one a planned telephone call with Ukraine’s president in 2016 and earlier embassy information about the release of a U.S. prisoner from Turkey.

Comer has vowed to obtain all the Joe Biden pseudonym emails in the coming weeks,

Weaponization of Law Enforcement

Information released years after Obama left office revealed that the former president was briefed by CIA Director John Brennan in July 2016 that Clinton was intercepted plotting to frame Donald Trump for "collusion with Russia" and kept quiet about the scheme. Special Counsel John Durham concluded in a report that the allegations were "hogwash" with no merit and yet the government knew they were unfounded and kept investigating for years.

Other documents show Obama and Biden both attended meetings in January 2017 where government officials plotted how to extend an investigation of Trump national security adviser Mike Flynn on issues like false statements and the Logan Act after FBI agents concluded Flynn had not committed any crimes.

Attorney General William Barr said in an interview with CBS News that "People sometimes plead to things that turn out not to be crimes, and the Department of Justice is not persuaded that this was material to any legitimate counterintelligence investigation. So it was not a crime."

Soliciting, Accepting Foreign Money

Hillary Clinton and her team collected tens of millions of dollars for the Clinton Foundation from foreign interests with business before her at the time as Secretary of State. Former President Bill Clinton accepted a $500,000 speaking fee from a Russian investment bank while his wife, the then-Secretary of State was overseeing a reboot of U.S.-Moscow relations. Bill Clinton was also paid $750,000 to address a telecom conference in China.

While those donations went to the nonprofit where many of the Clinton aides worked and which became Bill Clinton’s primary post-presidency work, part of that non-profit was forced to shutter operations in 2017.

Hunter Biden, his uncle and associates solicited business fees from foreign interests specifically for profit, including from Russia, Romania, Ukraine and China, as his father oversaw policy in those countries as Obama’s vice president,

State Department officials have testified that Hunter Biden’s efforts in Ukraine created the appearance of a conflict of interest and one wrote in a classified email made public recently by Just the News that it also undercut U.S. efforts to fight endemic corruption in the former Soviet republic.

Senators Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Ia.) released a report in 2020 alleging the Bidens potentially jeopardized national security with the pursuit of foreign money, and the FBI received information from a trusted informant in 2020 that remains under investigation suggesting that millions of dollars flowing to the Biden family from Ukraine may have involved bribery.

It is unclear whether if subpoenaed that former President Obama will respond, let alone testify about Biden or Hillary Clinton's money-making schemes under his presidency. But it becomes clearer every day that documents may show that there was a virus of corruption in the White House long before President Biden took office.