One of Harry Truman’s most famous aphorisms is that “An honest public servant cannot become rich in politics.” Joe Biden embodied the corollary to that aphorism, for he was anything but honest, and he became very rich, indeed. When Biden left the White House, despite an almost uninterrupted 50-year career on the public dime, his reported net worth was $10 million, while the rest of his family also enjoyed the high life. Now that Biden has been tossed onto the trash heap of history, the money allegedly is drying up.

Biden entered politics in 1974, after a very short career as a lawyer. His Senate salary was never higher than $174,000 per year. His wife, a community college teacher (and, judging by her misbegotten thesis, a very bad one), peaked at a salary of $86,000. That’s a decent upper-middle-class income, but it’s not the stuff of a net worth equal to $10 million, with a portfolio that includes two lovely houses.

So, where did the money come from? It came from Joe selling access.

Image by Grok.

Some of it was the usual domestic access sales we now used to seeing on the left, in the form of exorbitantly high speakers’ fees, ridiculous book deals, and faux faculty positions. And of course, you can arrange to sell your son’s poster art (and yes, Hunter does have some modicum of talent) for hundreds of thousands of dollars. That “above board” graft is the norm for Democrat politicians, and goes a long way to explaining the Obamas’ $70 million portfolio.

But with Joe, more was going on because he was selling access to foreign governments and actors. We learned from Hunter Biden’s laptop that Joe, the “Big Guy,” got 10% of all the deals Hunter Biden did. And what were those deals? Well, the laptop told that tale. The deals were selling access to the Big Guy, and the buyers were Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs, and the Communist Chinese government.

In addition, reports say that Biden’s siblings came in for all sorts of access-generated wealth as well. There’s a reason that Biden pardoned everyone in his family before leaving office. The Autopen may have signed that pardon, too, but Biden, had he been aware, would have heartily agreed.

Selling political access, even when not openly illegal, seditious, or treasonous, is still deeply corrupt. It’s a Third World way of doing politics that warps American policies and destroys trust in the government. By rights, Joe should be investigated at a criminal level and, if what he did amounted to taking bribes or worse, he should be prosecuted and spend the rest of his life in prison—even if in a prison for the criminally insane, given his manifest dementia.

Sadly, people don’t always get the criminal justice comeuppance they deserve, but that doesn’t mean that justice doesn’t happen. Those in the know are saying that, with Biden’s political power gone, the market for access to Biden has dried up and, with it, the Biden family’s money:

During the conversation, Mark Halperin pointed out that the Biden clan was once pulling in around $10 million a year (which sounds as if Biden didn’t report a lot of his income, in addition to the money spread to siblings, children, and grandchildren), but now it’s down pretty much to zero. Sean Spicer added that “the grift is over,” and the family’s lavish lifestyle is going unfunded.

No one is going to pay for speeches from a man who can’t put together a coherent sentence, and no one in China, Russia, Ukraine, or any other anti-American foreign nation is going to funnel millions to a discarded politician for non-existent “access.” All Biden and Jill will be left with is Biden’s pension—which is a nice pension, but isn’t the kind of wealth to which they’ve become accustomed.

The seeming disastrous drop in the family fortunes isn’t the justice Biden should be getting, but it is a form of justice, and for that, we can be grateful.