GOP’s supposed smoking gun in Biden impeachment inquiry revealed to be a dud

House Republicans have been criticized for authorizing an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden with no evidence of the "high crimes and misdemeanors" that typically merit the process. A recent New York Times report has now revealed that one of their chief pieces of evidence doesn't pass muster when analyzing it in its proper context.

While questioning a forensic accountant in September, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Florida) alleged that a text message from Hunter Biden to his daughter, Naomi alluding to giving half of his salary to his father constituted "a potential money laundering operation or potential pay-for-play operation." hinting at illegal "money going from son to father."

“I Hope you all can do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family Fro[sic] 30 years,” Hunter wrote to his daughter in the January 2019 text message. “It’s really hard. But don’t worry unlike Pop I won’t make you give me half your salary.”

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The New York Times' Adam Entous delved into the history that led to the text, which Hunter Biden sent while he was in the throes of addiction to alcohol and crack cocaine. At the time, the Bidens were on vacation at a ski resort in Wyoming, when Naomi's younger sister Finnegan texted her that she had injured herself in a skiing accident. While Finnegan's mother, Kathleen Buhle — who divorced Hunter in 2017 — wanted her to receive treatment for her broken tibia in Washington, DC, where she lived, her father wanted her to be treated by a New York-based orthopedic surgeon recommended to Hunter by the doctor handling his drug rehabilitation treatment. Finnegan ultimately chose to go to DC, which angered Hunter and prompted him to send that text in a drug-fueled rage.

Hunter Biden's reference to giving his father half his salary stems from his time as a college student at Georgetown University in DC, where his freshman year roommate Ted Dziak recalled to the Times that Hunter frequently worked odd jobs even though his father had been a US senator for more than a decade at the time. Dziak said Hunter referenced "a million times" that his father said he could "keep half of the paycheck" from his jobs but "hand over the other half for 'room and board.'"

The Times reported that Hunter Biden frequently invoked that story when his daughters attended Sidwell Friends — a tony private school whose students typically come from wealthy families — and worried that his children were becoming spoiled. Naomi Biden told the Times that during her senior year at the University of Pennsylvania, her father encouraged her to get a job at a local Greek restaurant in order to be more self-sufficient.

"He said, 'now that you’re working, I’m taking away your allowance,’” Naomi said. "And I just thought that was the craziest concept that I'd ever heard. So I'm doing this good thing and you’re taking away my allowance? I was so mad at him, so angry, and I specifically remember him in that instance saying, 'when I was in college, I worked every single day, and I even had to give Pop half the money because he was paying for my college education.'"

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"I don’t necessarily believe that he gave my Pop half," she added. "It's the classic parent saying, 'you don’t know what it was like for me when I was growing up. I just had it so much harder than you.' Throughout childhood, we would hear that a lot.”

Click here to read the Times' full report.