How Did Joe Biden Make $11 Million in One Year?

CLAY: Buck, I’m looking at a lot of this stuff. We were just talking about it off air. Joe Biden. Joe Biden — who had never done anything in business, who had been a politician for over 40 years, was vice president of the United States until late January of 2017 — on his federal tax return in 2017, Buck, he reported income of over $11 million. Joe Biden. A million dollars a month this dude was making? Because he was on his federal salary in January.

So, between February and December of 2017 he made over $11 million, according to his federal tax return, and this is from the Daily Mail: $5.2 million of that they can’t really figure out where it came from. Of the over… I think he made $16 million the next couple years total. But I look at that number, Buck, this is not a guy who owned a business.

This is not a guy who is used to being able to produce income on that level. And suddenly, a spigot of cash came pouring in. Where did that money come from? I think there’s a legitimate investigation that should ensue because, Buck, what I think happened is, I think when Donald Trump got elected, Joe Biden thought his political career was over and he just turned to Hunter Biden and he said, “Let’s get rich,” and Hunter Biden, drug addict, somehow turned on the money spigot.

BUCK: He’s not a paragon of virtue or judgment.

CLAY: He’s not Warren Buffett, I think we could see, yes. He’s not Warren Buffett. It’s not like Hunter Biden said, “Okay, Pops, give me your $500,000 in life savings and we can turn that into a massive amount of money just based on my investing acumen.” This was shady. There is almost no way to justify it — and this is just what’s being reported in the tax returns, because we know that Hunter Biden is under investigation for not paying his fair share of taxes.

BUCK: I know that this is something that we say, and I always want to come at this with fresh ideas and new analysis. But sometimes you do just have to sort of hammer the point. You’ve made this before, Clay. I’ve made this before. If Donald Trump had a wayward, crack-addict son who was dancing around in his tighty-whities impregnating random strippers, denying paternity from them, doing shady business deals with Chinese businessmen —

CLAY: And Ukrainians.

BUCK: — Ukrainian oligarchs, Ukrainian corrupt energy companies while his dad is running U.S. foreign policy in Ukraine? I want everyone should understand is Joe Biden was Obama’s point man in Ukraine. That’s why he fired Victor Shokin, the prosecutor, bragged about it at a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations. This would be constant meltdown mode.

We’d be saying that the president — no, they’d be saying the Trump presidency. They said it anyway, but they’d say it was brought through these shady schemes. They’d be saying that you can’t trust anything this president does, he’s been paid off. And with Hunter Biden, what is really the explanation? “Oh, it’s not that interesting”? It’s actually fascinating.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: I disagree with their, “It’s not interesting” line.

CLAY: Yeah, that was the claim that that The Atlantic writer, I think, made.

BUCK: Applebaum from The Atlantic, yes.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: “I don’t have information about visits from ten years ago.” Welcome back to Clay and Buck.

BUCK: Well, we’re gonna try to track down that information for you. We’re curious to know what exactly was going on here, ’cause he’s got millions and millions of dollars flowing into Joe Biden’s LLCs and into Jill Biden’s various businesses — Dr. Jill Biden. (chuckles) Clay… Clay is…

CLAY: I’m just fired up about this, Buck, because I assume that a lot of listeners out there are thinking through this too. It’s really hard to make $11 million in a year when you don’t have anything other than your own labor to sell. Right? It’s not as if Joe Biden is Taylor Swift or a NBA or NHL or NFL player where he’s making millions of dollars in income off of his direct labor. So when I see — especially ’cause he worked ’til the end of January. When I see that he reported over $11 million in income in 2017, Buck — a million dollars a month — that’s really, really hard to do in an ethical and legal way.

BUCK: Just also point out that the Clintons masterminded this whole program of creating a charity that was really a pass-through for access payment to the Clintons, right? That’s why they had the Clinton Global Initiative. If any wants to disagree with that characterization, they’d have to explain why when Hillary loses in 2016, they have to shut down the Clinton Global Initiative basically right away.

All of a sudden Saudi Arabia wasn’t so interested in writing checks to, quote, “charity.” But also, all their private jet travel for the Clintons paid out of the foundation. I mean, this is has become a much more common thing across the board, people using and abuse foundations that are ostensibly for a good purpose for private need to cover their expenses, their travel, et cetera. But the Clintons, Clay, $100 million.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Bill and Hillary Clinton somehow made a hundred million dollars giving speeches and having books ghostwritten for them. No one’s even buying these books. So they really set the standard, and I think Joe Biden felt like, “Hey, man, Biden family business, time to turn on the spigots,” and he let Hunter Biden be the point man! I mean, think about this guy’s judgment, everybody. Think about that. I wouldn’t trust Hunter Biden with $5 to go buy me a latte!

CLAY: Well, I said last week, I think: If I owned a gas station, there’s a zero percent chance that I would hire Joe Biden to run it. And if I owned a gas station and Hunter Biden wanted to be an employee, I’d expect that he would steal from me.