A Biden Victory Will Be Bad News For Kim Dotcom.

OH, THE IRONY! The NZ Supreme Court has further cleared the path for Kim Dotcom’s extradition on the very same day Joe Biden is predicted to become the 46th President-elect of the United States. Why is that ironic? Because it was Vice-President Joe Biden, bagman supreme for the Democratic Party’s big Hollywood donors,  who made damn sure that Kim Dotcom found himself in the Justice Department’s cross-hairs. Ironic, too, because our new ministers of Justice and Foreign Affairs, eager to curry favour with a future Biden Administration, are highly likely to deliver the big man like a porker to the slaughter.

Nobody hated Kim Dotcom and his Megaupload site more than the equally “mega” media giants whose movies, television shows and popular music offerings were being watched and listened to without authorisation – or payment – courtesy of Dotcom’s site. The same people who monstered the New Zealand Government into changing this country’s laws to facilitate the more effective exploitation of workers in the movie industry, prevailed upon the Obama Administration to make an example of the highly-successful (but dangerously unprotected) Finnish-German media entrepreneur-cum-swashbuckler.

And who was their man in Washington? The man with President Barack Obama’s ear? Why, it was none other than Vice-President, Joe Biden. Back in 2012 there was nothing remotely “sleepy” about Joe. The former Senator for the State of Delaware was one of the longest-serving and best-connected of the Democratic Party’s heavy-hitters. Hollywood, and all the other the happy liberal hunting-grounds of California – including the multi-billionaires of Silicon Valley – weren’t just on the speed-dials of Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi. Biden knew ‘em too – and they knew Biden. In the immortal words of Hannibal Lecter: “Quid pro quo, Clarice, quid pro quo.”

So, the word was passed backwards and forwards along the pumping arteries of global American power. From the media and IT billionaires to Biden, from Biden to Obama, from Obama to his quirky Kiwi golfing partner, Prime Minister John Key. Dotcom may have thought he was safe from his enemies in these faraway islands at the bottom of the world, but he could not have been more wrong.

Had Dotcom not had millions of dollars of his own to spend on some of the United States and New Zealand’s best lawyers, then we may never have discovered how the trap was set and sprung. With the complexity of one of those spy-movie plots Megaupload made it so easy for the world to watch, the US Justice department, the FBI, the US National Security Agency, the NZ Police, the NZ Government Communications Security Bureau and the NZ Security Intelligence Service all pitched in to bring the Coatesville millionaire to “justice”.

It’s easy to assume that deeds this dastardly are only ever set in motion by Republican baddies like George W. Bush and Donald Trump. In the case of Kim Dotcom, however, the dirty-tricks and even dirtier politics had Democratic Party fingerprints all over them. Be it drone strikes in Yemen, or armed extradition raids executed on Coatesville mansions, right here in little-old New Zealand, there have always been plenty of bad things to keep the “goodies” busy. Truth to tell, since that undoubted “baddy”, Donald Trump, took up residence in the White House, Dotcom’s life has become easier – not harder. Maybe it takes one swashbuckler to recognise another?

Which is why, almost certainly, Dotcom will be rooting for a Trump victory. If it goes the other way, then his position here will become extremely precarious. Just imagine how effusive Jacinda Ardern will be if the longed-for “Blue Wave” rolls over the USA and Biden claims an easy, uncontested, victory. “Anything we can do to help, Mr President-elect, just ask!” How long, do you suppose, it will take the new President’s Hollywood friends and donors to remind him. “Actually, there is something Jacinda Ardern could do for you, Mr President. Remember that guy, Kim Dotcom?”

And when the word comes down from the State Department to our own Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, that the rapid improvement of US-NZ relations would be greatly assisted by expediting Kim Dotcom’s extradition, is it really likely that Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta won’t nod her head sagely and pass the message on dutifully to the PM, who will, in turn, have a quiet word with her new Justice Minister, Kris Faafoi. Not an instruction, you understand, just a kindly suggestion.

In the meantime, the wheels of justice will grind up even more of Dotcom’s millions, and the people we’d like to cast as friends and heroes will be readying a grey, windowless, federal cell for the man who dared to challenge the laws of copyright. Because that’s just the way it works when you tweak the nose of Uncle Sam and his financial backers. You spend 15 years serving as a warning to the rest of us.

And the moral of this tale? There have never been any morals in this tale. Suffice to say: “Be careful what you wish for – and who you piss off!”