Sometime in the future I will probably feel compelled to write more thoroughly about Hunter Biden’s decision to accept a job on the board of directors of a Ukrainian natural gas company, but for now I just want to make a rather obvious observation. If you have the right connections in this world, you can get paid a ton of money for doing almost nothing. Whether in this country or abroad, offering someone a job on a corporate board of directors is often a way that rich people help other rich people. It’s a small insulated world, and you’re lucky if you can be a part of it.

Hunter Biden might have received such a offer as the son of a longtime senator. Other people receive such opportunities because they’re ne’er-do-well son-in-laws who have no more legitimate prospects. But he almost certainly received the offer because he was the son of the sitting American vice-president.

There is something inherently unfair and foul-smelling about such arrangements, but this case smells worse because there is a political aspect to it. The reason he should have declined the offer is not because it was illegal or particularly far out of the ordinary. The reason is precisely what we’re seeing now, which is political fallout for his father.

As a political clan, the Bidens should have avoided this. There are other ways to make money. But the Republicans could not help themselves. They took what was a legitimate appearance problem and turned into a tapestry of lies and misinformation, and enlisted foreign government officials to help them spread their lies.

So, now, there’s really no alternative but to defend Hunter Biden because what he is being accused of doing is a lie. What Joe Biden is being accused of doing is a lie. And those lies now constitute clear and convincing rationales for the removal of the president and the imprisonment of Rudy Giuliani.