For years President Joe Biden has denied knowing anything about his son Hunter’s business dealings, or ever discussing those business dealings with him. News organizations that once chewed up presidents for far less accepted those denials as fact. But something has changed. We have reached the hard-questions-shouted-at-the-president-while-he’s-trying-to-conduct-foreign-policy stage of political scandal.

On Thursday, President Biden welcomed Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to the White House, ignoring reporters’ shouted questions as they sat in the Oval Office for a photo op. Then, breaking with “norms,” Biden refused to hold a joint press conference with the Italian leader.

Reporters wanted the president’s comments on the shocking events in a Delaware courtroom on Wednesday, when a secretly crafted plea agreement between Hunter Biden and the Biden Justice Department was smashed to pieces by a judge’s skeptical questions.

One key element of the complicated deal, concealed even from the judge until just before the hearing, was paragraph 15 of the “diversion agreement,” the document related to a gun charge, supposedly separate from the agreement to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges.

“Agreement Not to Prosecute,” the paragraph is titled. It states that the United States government agrees “not to criminally prosecute Biden” for “any federal crimes encompassed by the attached Statement of Facts (Attachment A) and the Statement of Facts attached as Exhibit 1 to the Memorandum of Plea Agreement filed this same day.”

U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika poked at that and soon the truth came out: Hunter Biden had only agreed to plead guilty to the tax misdemeanors because he understood that he was also getting complete immunity from potential future charges stemming from his years of sketchy foreign business dealings.

Under the judge’s questioning, prosecutors said the president’s son is still under investigation and future charges are a possibility. Outraged, Hunter Biden’s lawyers called off the deal and chaos ensued.

However, amidst the chaos, Hunter Biden acknowledged in court that he started a partnership in 2017 with CEFC, a Chinese energy company with ties to the Chinese Communist Party, and that he received $644,000 from that company.

Wednesday’s events uncorked a foul-smelling mixture of influence-peddling allegations and troubling corruption of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Biden’s Justice Department recently brought criminal charges against a Biden corruption whistleblower, Dr. Gal Luft, for not registering as a foreign agent of CEFC, the same company that was also paying Hunter and two other members of the Biden family. They all accepted vast sums of money from CEFC without registering as foreign agents. The whistleblower was indicted. The family members were not.

Also, IRS criminal investigators testified under oath that were blocked by the Biden Justice Department from following up on a WhatsApp message they uncovered from Hunter to a CEFC executive in which the president’s son wrote that he was “with his father” and they were “waiting for the call.” Hunter added a few more references to his powerful father and promised to “forever hold a grudge” if the “commitment made” was not “fulfilled.” Ten days later, CEFC wired $5.1 million to Biden-linked bank accounts.

Biden’s Department of Justice also blocked the IRS investigators from conducting searches and interviews in the Hunter Biden case that routinely would have been required in an investigation of anyone else.

It’s clear now that the president has consistently misled the American people about his son’s business dealings and his own knowledge of them. For example, during an October 2020 debate with then-president Trump, Biden declared, “My son has not made money in terms of this thing about, what are you talking about, China. The only guy who made money from China is this guy [indicating Trump]. He’s the only one. Nobody else has made money from China.”

Actually, Biden family members made quite a lot of money from China. Also from Romania. Also from Ukraine. None of them registered as a foreign agent. At least one of them neglected to pay income taxes. And with their extensive collection of bank accounts and shell companies, painstakingly uncovered by the House Oversight Committee, they may have violated federal laws against money laundering.

There have been presidential relatives in past administrations who engaged in shady business deals, but this is different by orders of magnitude. The evidence is accumulating that the Biden family ran a full-blown influence-peddling scam spanning years and hauling in millions of dollars, and that as president, Biden is running a corrupt Department of Justice that is trying to cover it up.

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One piece of evidence is an FD-1023, a memo that FBI special agents use to document the information reported by a confidential human source. According to the unclassified four-page document, recently released by Senator Chuck Grassley, the confidential human source reported that the owner of Ukrainian energy company Burisma had paid millions of dollars to the Bidens when Joe Biden was vice president. Additionally, Burisma had hired Hunter for the board of directors at the Bidens’ request and at a stunning salary of $83,000 per month “to protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems.” According to the confidential human source, the Burisma owner retained text messages and 17 recordings, including two recordings of conversations with Joe Biden, “that show he was coerced to make such payments.”

The most damaging information to date may be waiting for President Biden this week.

Hunter Biden’s former business partner, Devon Archer, is scheduled to sit for a transcribed interview with the House Oversight Committee on Monday. Last week the New York Post reported that Archer will testify he was personally present in dozens of business meetings when Hunter would call his father, who was then vice president, and put him on speakerphone.

For years Biden has told the public he never discussed his son’s business dealings with him, but last week the White House shifted to saying Biden was never “in business” with his son.

There are bank records, whistleblowers, eyewitnesses, text messages, and possibly recordings.

The “hard-questions-shouted-at-the-president” stage of a political scandal is only the beginning.

Write [email protected] and follow her on Twitter @Susan_Shelley