Picture if you will the Secretary of State and the Attorney General of the United States running around the world with this rogue whackjob ex-Mayor of New York City spreading this debunked conspiracy to smear the presidents rival. Does take a bit to digest that these conspiracy theory nutjobs are running the show down there, imploding right before our eyes.

Yet, in this fast-paced 280 character world it is fairly easy to get sucked into the rabbit hole off misinformation and missing facts, the average consumer of news is certainly at a disadvantage.

So out digging and digesting of news and views out in this wild, wild west, and the coup d’état would seem to me to be the overthrow of the average jo, as much as Joe. A battle to confuse the plebs, the voter who deserves to know what their government is up to, and know whether they are working for the interests of the country, or just themselves.

Conspiracies are just a vehicle, some other idea is driving this car, though.

And oh ya, this thing has the scent of Ruskie all over it. Born from some remnant band of Vikings, a people of a lustrous history entangled in a manufactured enigma of devious power and control, is the nemesis first on my list of interested characters intent on stirring up a constitutional crisis.

But….

In the same way that Russians overestimate America, seeing it as an all-powerful orchestrator of global political developments, Americans project their own fears onto Russia, a country that is a paradox of deftness, might, and profound weakness—unshakably steady, yet somehow always teetering on the verge of collapse. Like America, it is hostage to its peculiar history, tormented by its ghosts.

The ATLANTIC | What Putin Really Wants | JULIA IOFFE
  JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018 ISSUE
 

The strategy Russia generally adopts is to stir up crap, or, as the article so succinctly says … “throw spaghetti at the wall and sees what sticks“.

Given the continued corruption a viking its way through the Ukraine at the time, is it not a little suspicious that this son of the Vice-President of the United States all of a sudden gets this cushy position with this company owned by a pro-Russian Ukrainian Oligarch? And, keep in mind that this appointment happens just after Russia had illegally invaded the Ukraine.

Was it Putin’s idea? Probably a conspiracy too far, but?? Who can say.

Anyway, you know, dangle something in their face you know they can’t resist to lure them in, the compromising position, a kompromat.

During the Cold War, the use of kompromat was a favoured tactic by the KGB. Hotel rooms across the Soviet Union were bugged and fitted with tiny cameras to surreptitiously record illicit dalliances between western politicians, journalists, businessmen and KGB-hired prostitutes.

More recently, Russian intelligence and political officials have used kompromat to settle scores or to discredit government critics. Kompromat thrived in the 1990s during the presidency of Boris Yeltsin. After the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, thousands of intelligence personnel suddenly found themselves without a job. Skilled in information warfare and looking for work, they offered their expertise in political blackmail and character assassination to anyone who could pay.

NEW STATESMAN | What is “kompromat” and how does it work?
By Richard Maher, 12 JANUARY 2017

First a backgrounder on Hunter Biden can be found here (written by Matthew Yglesias, co-founder of Vox) but in a nutshell, his whole career is being Joe Biden’s son.

So I guess Hunter was the black sheep of the family living in the shadow of his older more successful brother Beau (who died of Brain Cancer in 2015). By 2014 Hunter was not exactly on an upward trajectory, but rather the opposite.

By February of 2014, Hunter was discharged from the Navy for testing positive for cocaine. The next spring, Beau died. In October 2015, Hunter separated from his wife Kathleen. She filed for divorce in 2016, and in paperwork complained that Hunter had been “spending extravagantly on his own interests including drugs, alcohol, prostitutes, strip clubs, and gifts for women with whom he has sexual relations.”

VOX.com

So you can see where having $50,000 per month stymie of cash may come in handy to one who was prone to snorting it up their nose whilst dancing with the devils of nefarious pursuits.

Putting Hunter on the board of a pro-Russian Ukrainian Energy giant (Burisma Holdings) had two advantages (for some background click here) – for one, it bolstered the companies image since it had been under investigation for some time. This on its own helped to create an image of them tied to the U.S., opposed to Russia. The United States (and other western nations) had been in talks with the Ukraine to crack down, and having the son of an American VP was a good look.

At the time Viktor Shokin was brought in as top Ukrainian Prosecutor, the country had been staving off serious criticism from many camps, not the least of which was Britain who was investigating Burisma Holdings for fraud.

Shokin, regardless of what he says, was widely believed to be very corrupt, slow-walking investigations and even taking bribes to not investigate.

Daria Kaleniuk, co-founder of the Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Action Center told The Washington Post, “Shokin was not investigating. He didn’t want to investigate Burisma. Shokin was fired not because he wanted to do that investigation, but quite to the contrary, because he failed that investigation.”

BUSINESS INSIDER | A Ukraine gas company tied to Joe Biden’s son is at the center of the Trump-whistleblower scandal
John Haltiwanger, Sep 26, 2019, 4:44 PM

And two, and this is my thinking, having Hunter on that board of a company that had been investigated for fraud also helped to create just enough of a whiff of something untoward that could end up becoming useful.

Vice-President Biden and others were successful eventually in their pressure on the Ukrainian government, and Shokin was gone by 2016. {I wrote about this here. }

Also, that seat on the board of the pro-Russian energy giant ended this year, just so ya know.

So having desperate offspring of your foes sitting on the board of a compromised company with Russian ties could offer just enough conflict of interest to be useful long-term, as much as short-term. A win-win, buying into something that just may pay dividends down the road.

You know, throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks.

Kompromat is not just a technique unique to Russians, as spies from many agencies globally use this strategy to bring assets on board, to infiltrate foreign governments or regimes they are investigating, or at war with, and whatnot. Spies have been known to compromise key individuals in order to coerce them to become double agents, illicit inside information from, it’s as old as corruption and sin.

So, you can see how a son of a democratic leader messed up on drugs and pricey whores is a gift to someone whose sole joy in life is weakening democracy on a global scale. How useful is a son of an old foe, with his delicious smorgasbord of sin and vice to lure, eager to ride the coattails of his fathers name.

At the heart of this, you can see how removing one or two facts from this epic narrative concerning Hunter Biden and Burisma Holdings completely changes the perspective?

Say, remove the fact he was a cocaine user and had a penitent for strippers and prostitutes, and ignore the details concerning Shoken and his brief stint as the head prosecutor not prosecuting, and see how it can be swung in a completely different direction?

Methinks Trump may not want to throw stones, living in his own house of glass, surrounded by his kids profiting off the presidency, him busy obstructing justice to make sure they don’t all get implicated by Mueller. Eh?

So, that is why they are also so hellbent on discrediting the whole investigation itself into the Ruskies and the Trump campaign, and for the same exact reason they are trying to pin on Joe Biden.