One of the more popular fiction devices in novels for years has been the “time-split” – where the narrative of the story is being told in two different periods of time, often closely paralleling each other, or telling the story of a family drama while flipping back and forth between different members of that family in different decades, if not centuries. It seems the Biden family has its own time-split drama, and Professor Jonathan Turley brought it up in a column yesterday.

Apparently, Joe’s great-great-grandfather, Moses Robinette (remember, Joe’s own middle name, and his father’s, is Robinette) had quite a violent record – and a presidential pardon thanks to friends who were willing to go to bat for him.

A historian recently discovered that Joe Biden’s great-great-grandfather, Moses J. Robinette, was accused and found guilty of attempted murder. The case followed a strikingly familiar pattern.

Fittingly, Robinette was a government contractor. He was paid to give veterinary care for the horses of the Union army during the Civil War, taking the job after his hotel was burned down.

At 42, Robinette sounded like his great-great-grandson. He was married and described as “full of fun, always lively and joking.” But the good times ended on March 21, 1864 in Beverly Ford, Va., Robinette got into a fight with another contractor, John J. Alexander, who overheard Robinette bad mouthing him to a female cook. When Alexander confronted him, Robinette pulled a knife and, in the ensuing fight, cut Alexander repeatedly.

It was an early version of President Biden’s “corn pop” story where he faced a gang member wielding a straight razor. However, in this version “the Bad Dude” was a wagon master, and it was the Biden family member wielding the knife. Robinette left Alexander bleeding from multiple cuts. His trial noted that he was intoxicated and had incited “a dangerous quarrel.” (It appears that back then it was a Biden arguing over what truly constitutes “incitement.”)

Robinette argued a lack of intent to commit murder, insisting “I had no malice towards Mr. Alexander before or since. He grabbed me and possibly might have injured me seriously had I not resorted to the means that I did.”

The argument would make Abby (sic) Lowell blush, since there was no evidence that Alexander had even been armed. Robinette was found guilty of attempted murder and sentenced to two years’ incarceration at hard labor.

Turley, in true “time-split” narrative fashion, points out the similarities of the Robinette case to the modern-day Biden case.

That is when the case took another familiar turn. Friends of Robinette interceded with the Army and powerful political figures.

There were long delays. It took three months for the commander of the Army of the Potomac, Gen. George G. Meade, to confirm Robinette’s sentence. His friends then went to Waitman T. Willey, the senator from West Virginia, who went to bat for Biden, who pressured President Abraham Lincoln’s private secretary, John G. Nicolay, who then leaned on the judge advocate general, Joseph Holt, to send over a report and full accounting of the case.

Biden’s associates argued that, although Robinette had been the only person armed, the victim was a teamster “much his superior in strength and Size, all under the impulse of the excitement of the moment.”

They beseeched Lincoln to “think of his motherless Daughters and sons at home! … [Praying for] your interposition in behalf of the unfortunate Father…and distressed family of loved Children, Union Daughters & Union Sons.”

Their final argument was the one quintessentially Bidenesque. They told Lincoln that he was a political ally who was “ardent, and Influential … in opposing Traitors and their schemes to destroy the Government.” (It appears, even back then, the Bidens were union men.)

It worked. Lincoln was known for leniency in pardons, and he signed a “Pardon for unexecuted part of punishment. A. Lincoln.” on Sept. 1. 1864. Robinette was a free man.

So Robinette was found guilty at trial, severely cut an unarmed man, but was freed with the help of a U.S. senator with a plea that he was a loyal political ally.

Whatever the true merits, it showed the importance of having friends in high places. Or, as the president once put it more bluntly, “No one f**ks with a Biden.” It is family scripture that runs from Moses to James to Joseph.

While this bit of history is definitely family scandal material, it does illustrate how the Biden family has used influence – either others or their own – for their personal benefit.

Wait, I can hear readers screaming. This is not at all relevant to the current case against Hunter Biden, or the current impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden. After all, Alexander Smirnov, who has now been revealed to have been the FBI informant that produced the FD-1023 form alleging that Joe and Hunter Biden accepted bribe money from Burisma, has now been charged by Special Counsel David Weiss for allegedly making up that entire claim, at the instigation of the Russians. Whether this “Russian disinformation” was intentional or unintentional by Smirnov is going to be for David Weiss to prove in court.

Alexander Smirnov, 43, was indicted by a California grand jury on two felony counts of making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record for statements he made to the FBI referenced in a June 2020 FD-1023 form that House Republicans have used as evidence in Joe Biden’s impeachment inquiry.

The indictment alleges that Smirnov lied to his FBI handler about meetings he had with a Burisma official while Joe Biden was vice president, during which Smirnov claims the official told him the energy company hired Hunter Biden to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems” and to “deal with” then-Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who had investigating Bursima.

Shokin was fired from his post in 2016 after Joe Biden pressured Ukrainian leaders, arguing that the prosecutor was corrupt.

Smirnov alleges the Burisma official, who is unnamed in the indictment but is believed to be the company’s founder Mykola Zlochevsky, later told him he paid Hunter Biden and then-Vice President Biden $5 million each.

“The events the Defendant first reported to the Handler in June 2020 were fabrications,” Weiss states in the indictment.

“In truth and fact, [Smirnov] had contact with executives from Burisma in 2017, after the end of the Obama-Biden Administration and after the then Ukrainian Prosecutor General had been fired in February 2016, in other words, when [Joe Biden] had no ability to influence U.S. policy and when the Prosecutor General was no longer in office,” Weiss argues.

“In short, the [Smirnov] transformed his routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against [Joe Biden], the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political parties for President, after expressing bias against [Joe Biden] and his candidacy,” he continues.

There’s a lot to unpack here, but Representative Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, had a very salient point – there are a lot more questions regarding the Biden family business than just this one FBI informant’s story.

Jordan, in an interview today, wondered openly what the FBI or David Weiss has been doing all this time, not investigating such an explosive allegation against Joe Biden. Obviously, a bribery charge would be a near slam-dunk situation requiring impeachment. But we’re also very aware, via the whistleblowers, that the FBI didn’t WANT to look too closely at any of the allegations swirling around the Biden family. Smirnov could have lied to the FBI. That’s up to Special Counsel Weiss to prove in court, now that he has indicted Smirnov. But just because Smirnov is accused of lying to the FBI doesn’t mean that the Biden family is off the hook, Professor Turley pointed out.

Alexander Smirnov is now a defendant in federal court after being charged by special counsel David Weiss for spreading a false story about Hunter Biden receiving $5 million from Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company.

The allegation has produced a stampede of Democrats who view his indictment as a much-needed talking point as the House continues to build the case of influence-peddling by the Biden family.

Some are using the charges to revive a previously debunked story that Hunter Biden’s laptop could be Russian disinformation. But a closer reading of the filing dispels those claims and contradicts a new effort by Hunter Biden to dismiss charges against himself.

The filing itself is actually an argument to keep Smirnov in federal detention.

However, there are a couple of aspects to the filing that undermine the claims of a “bombshell” revelation of a Russian disinformation campaign. First, these disclosures were not the result of surveillance or interceptions by American intelligence. Smirnov appears to have been cooperating with the United States and told his US “handler” about all of these contacts.

Second, Smirnov’s contacts were described as “recent” and did not apparently precede 2020. They have nothing to do with the laptop or the evidence of influence-peddling found in emails on that computer. This is solely a claim of a large payment to the Bidens from Burisma.

Third, the Justice Department states that Smirnov had expressed “bias” against Joe Biden and used “his routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma” to make the bribery allegations.

Hunter Biden’s legal team is citing the filing in seeking to cast doubt on all of the allegations and even the pending charges: “It now seems clear that the Smirnov allegations infected this case.”

They insist that the bribe allegation was key to the loss of the plea agreement that they struck with the president’s son. They argued that “having taken Mr. Smirnov’s bait of grand, sensational charges, the Diversion Agreement that had just been entered into and Plea Agreement that was on the verge of being finalized suddenly became inconvenient for the prosecution, and it reversed course and repudiated those Agreements.”

That is not how it happened.

Hunter Biden had received a sweetheart deal so rich as to put most defendants into hyperglycemic shock. Hunter would have avoided any jail time and been given sweeping immunity from future charges.

The reason that the deal fell apart was not any particular allegation of bribes. The alleged bribe was not part of the case. It fell apart because the judge asked a simple question on the meaning of the immunity. The deal immediately imploded as the prosecutor was forced to admit that he had never seen a deal like this for anyone other than Hunter Biden.

In relation to the influence-peddling investigation, this filing does not change the evidence that the Biden family made millions in shaking down foreign companies and business figures.

Most importantly, Smirnov was not the reason that Hunter was indicted by the same prosecutor, David Weiss, who just indicted HIM. (emphasis in the original)

It is worth remembering, as Turley points out, that Hunter Biden was indicted on tax evasion charges by Special Counsel Weiss. When you read the indictment itself, there is no mention of the Smirnov allegations. Hunter is also on the hook for three federal gun charges, which also have zero to do with Smirnov. Hunter Biden could potentially be charged with FARA violations, which could eventually be connected to the influence peddling and the selling of “the Biden brand” that we have been seeing through the testimony of Devon Archer, John Walker, and Tony Bobulinski. Any potential FARA charges on Hunter would immediately ensnare Joe, as it has become obvious, through the testimony of others, that access to Joe Biden was what was being bought by Hunter’s foreign business associates.

Let’s, in Jen Psaki’s favorite phrase, “circle back” to Great-Great-Grandpa Moses Robinette. He knew how to get himself out of a fairly significant legal mess. It seems that his descendants, Joe and Hunter, have that same talent for getting into these legal predicaments. Whether they have the same talent for getting back out of them is an open question. Joe Biden has already escaped prosecution for “willfully retaining” classified documents because he’s “an elderly man with a poor memory.” Hunter might not get so lucky, unless he can score a presidential pardon like Moses Robinette did. The problem is, the president that would be writing that pardon? His own father Joe, who said he wouldn’t do that.

How much do you want to bet that Biden family history repeats itself in the ultimate time-split mirroring twist if Joe Biden is a lame duck after the election?

Featured image: original Victory Girls art by Darleen Click