Our nation’s Framers of the Constitution recognized that corrupting influences from foreign powers were a very real threat. They were especially concerned about the possibility of an American president becoming corruptible.

George Washington issued a stern warning about this during his 1796 farewell address.

He cautioned against the poisonous influence of foreign governments on the affairs of the new United States.

He said, “Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence … the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.”

Our idealistic Founders were also realists.

They recognized that people’s private ambitions and thirst for power or money were powerful motivators. They knew the human condition was flawed and that the goodness of human nature could not be relied upon indefinitely.

So they established checks and balances of power in the three branches of government — the legislative, the executive, and the judiciary — and also in a federal system of divided power between states and the federal government.

They understood it was necessary to create these competing structures to guard against abuse of power.

But … they went even further.

The Constitution created two other safeguards against corruption in the impeachment powers of Article II, Section 4 and in the emoluments clause in Article I, Section 9, Clause 8.

The latter prohibits any person holding a government office from accepting any present, emolument, office, or title from any foreign state without congressional consent.

With these safeguards, the Founders believed they had created a governmental system better than any prior to forestall domestic public vice and the corruption that would emanate from foreign influence.

Still, Washington’s farewell address framed the issue in ways that are as relevant today as they were 227 years ago.

He wrote:

“The nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave … to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.

"Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury… So, likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils.”

The standard for impeachment as expressed in the Constitution is conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

Joe Biden’s more than questionable activities go back to his first year as vice president in 2009 and continued throughout his eight years serving in the two-term Obama administration, punctuated with son Hunter becoming and being paid $1 million per year as a board member of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma in 2014.

That role continued for more than four years, with a large $10 million payoff from Burisma allegedly coming to Hunter and Joe Biden after the latter blackmailed Ukraine by threatening the withholding of $1 billion in U.S. aid unless prosecutor general Victor Shokin was fired from the corruption investigation of Burisma in March of 2016 — an investigation that well may have exposed fraud, including questionable payments to Hunter Biden.

FBI documents refer to the two $5 million payments to Hunter and Joe Biden paid by Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky.

The case for impeaching President Joe Biden goes beyond his way of doing business related to Ukraine.

In 2014, Hunter Biden introduced his father, then vice president, to Kazakhstan oligarch Kenes Rakishev.

Records and testimony obtained by Rep. James Comer (R-KY), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, show that at that time of introducing Rakishev to vice president Biden, Hunter Biden and his business partner Devon Archer were working on a deal involving Burisma, on whose board they both served, and a Chinese company that would have been based in Kazakhstan.

To facilitate the deal and his relationship with Archer and the Bidens, Rakishev allegedly wired $142,300 to Rosemont Seneca — a shell company created by Devon and Hunter.

Another mysterious payment to the Bidens purportedly came during that same year.

Shortly after Joe Biden was introduced to Russian oligarch Yelena Baturina in February of 2014, $3.5 million was purportedly wired into Rosemont Seneca by Baturina.

These kinds of payments to the Bidens coming from oligarchs in Ukraine and other countries are way beyond a level where impeachment and removal from office are justified.

Also, the means of transferring and distributing funds follows the pattern of global criminal enterprises.

The Bidens were involved with the creation of shell companies for the purpose of concealing money transfers from foreign nationals and then distributing those transferred funds to Biden family members.

As egregious as all these payments and shell-game money transfers were, the scope and scale of Biden deal activities in China mandate consequences and correction — now.

China engages in unrestricted warfare against the United States, something our Founders could hardly fathom.

Today, blackmail is one of the chief tools in China’s massive elite capture program in the U.S., giving it control over many in our government — with the top elite family in the U.S. being President Joe Biden’s family.

Preliminary records assembled in 2021 and 2022 without subpoena power or access to bank records show that the Chinese elite have paid some $31 million to the Biden family.

And for the Chinese, these payments were (and are) about control and blackmail, which may explain why Biden more than any other U.S. president has pursued policies that have weakened America and helped China.

Bring on impeachment and let the hearings on the Bidens’ involvement in China begin.