Yevgeny Prigozhin is the owner of Russia’s notorious Wagner paramilitary group, an organization that is designated as a Transnational Criminal Organization and is frequently accused of committing war crimes.

Prigozhin served nearly a decade in prison after being convicted of “assault, robbery, and fraud” in 1981, according to Insider.

After being released from prison, he made his living selling hot dogs on street corners and eventually started a catering business, where he eventually met Russian President Vladimir Putin — then a low-level government official.

His company, Concord Catering, in the mid-to-late 1990s started receiving contracts from the Russian government.

According to a Wall Street Journal documentary, the Russian government laundered money to Prigozhin through his catering company, which he eventually used to start Wagner — initially a small group of only a few hundred former Russian soldiers that were hired to do Russia’s bidding in Ukraine in 2014.

Having Wagner do Russia’s bidding gave the Russian government plausible deniability as the group engaged in dirty work.

Russian government contracts to Concord Catering have reportedly been estimated to be well into the billions of dollars.

An expert on Wagner told The Wall Street Journal that it is best to think of the group as a “state-backed paramilitary cartel.” The group is accused of massacring and raping civilians and exploiting natural resources in poor countries with dire security situations. The resources — commodities like gold, oil, and gas — go back to the Russian government.

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The group operates in South America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe.

The Wall Street Journal said that it identified 64 companies that are linked to Wagner that are used as front companies to move money and assets. The report said that the Kremlin is connected to all of it.

Hundreds of Wagner troops faced off against U.S. forces in Syria during the Trump administration and were thoroughly decimated in a matter of minutes.

Prigozhin is also in charge of numerous other companies, including the Internet Research Agency, which was accused of interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

“We have interfered, we are interfering, and we will continue to interfere,” Prigozhin said the day before 2022’s midterm elections. “Carefully, accurately, surgically, and in our own way, as we know how to do.”

In Ukraine, the group has suffered heavy casualties over the last 16 months, losing tens of thousands of men.

The Russian government has allowed Wagner to recruit convicts out of prison to use as soldiers in the war; an estimated 40,000 convicts have fought in Ukraine.

The benefit of having Wagner soldiers engage in some of the most intense fighting in the war is that those losses don’t show up in reports the Russian military releases about the number of men they have lost, which helps them from a PR perspective.

Let’s play a game this Saturday night. Can you figure out what’s different about the latest White House talking point as it relates to President Joe Biden and his latchkey son’s business dealings?

On Friday, White House spokesman Ian Sams issued a statement on behalf of the president in response to questions about the release of the IRS Whistleblower’s transcripts alleging that Hunter threatened a Chinese Communist official while his father was in the room. That claim was the least scandalous of all — believe it or not — but it did cast further doubt on Joe’s defense that he never had anything to do with his son’s seemingly improbable career.

“As we have said many times before, the president was not in business with his son. As we have also said many times before, the Justice Department makes decisions in its criminal investigations independently, and in this case, the White House has not been involved,” Sams said. “As the president has said, he loves his son and is proud of him accepting responsibility for his actions and is proud of what he is doing to rebuild his life.”

Except, that isn’t quite what Biden has said before. The president’s defense used to be that he has never spoken with Hunter about his overseas business dealings. That is different from “the president was not in business with his son.”

Today, the Biden admin says, “The President was not in business with his son.“

Biden used to say, “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings”

Fun change. pic.twitter.com/mTsD5XItMI

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) June 23, 2023

Why the change?

Well, it might be true on paper that the president was never in official business with Hunter. But that doesn’t mean he has never spoken with his son. It also does not mean that Joe did not benefit financially from his son’s and other family members’ alleged business of selling access to U.S. government officials — including Joe as vice president. Furthermore, Sams and the Biden apparatus must forget that emails from Hunter’s laptop show that his father was “office mates” with Hunter and an employee of the CCP-linked company in question.

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"They weren't in business together, they just happened to both share an office with the CCP-linked business in question." – @IanSams46, essentially. pic.twitter.com/0yG17baTrs

— Tim Meads (@TimMeadsUSA) June 23, 2023

Biden, when confronted about allegations that he accepted illicit funding in connection to his son, has either “joked” about the topic or become very angry with whomever is asking the question. Here he is just a few weeks ago yukking it up and taunting the American people, saying, “Where’s the money?”

“Where’s the money?”

— President Biden responds to congressional Republicans accusing him of bribery, calling it a “bunch of malarkey” pic.twitter.com/nS7cdKrtTY

— The Recount (@therecount) June 8, 2023

And here he is in 2019 insulting some poor Iowa voter’s intelligence and challenging him to a push-up contest after that voter asked about how Hunter received a job in Ukraine despite being, well, not the brightest.

WATCH: A tense exchange with a voter at ⁦@JoeBiden⁩’s event in New Hampton, IA this morning, where a voter started out by telling Biden he had two problems with him: he was too old, and his son’s work in Ukraine pic.twitter.com/ok7m0ShFPd

— Molly Nagle (@MollyNagle3) December 5, 2019

Needless to say, the president has not had a good explanation or defense of how the Bidens made so much money despite not producing anything of value.

As pointed out by The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway, “The Biden family could take care of all of this so easily if they would just explain why every single member of the family, except for the unacknowledged granddaughter, was receiving millions of dollars in their bank accounts from oligarchs all over the world.”

“Literally just explain what the money was for and why was it running through shell corporations,” she said. “This should be so easy.”

Literally just explain what the money was for and why was it running through shell corporations. This should be so easy.

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) June 23, 2023

Instead, we are given glib responses, changing talking points, and arrogance on display from the entire Biden family as they go scot-free.

The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.