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Some Leftover Questions for Hunter Biden
About two years ago during a debate with Donald Trump, Joe Biden dismissed his son’s laptop emails as disinformation, maybe from Russia. After becoming president, Joe said his son Hunter was innocent, and most recently, even after Hunter pleaded guilty to tax evasion and weapons charges, said he was proud of his son. So in terms of leftover questions, let’s start with: which part are you proud of, Joe? The video evidence of his crack use? The video evidence of his cavorting with prostitutes? The tax evasion charges, or was it the weapons charge, where Hunter lied to obtain a handgun? Well, it is pride month after all…
Joking aside, the easy-sleazy plea deal Hunter accepted (which has him do no jail time in lieu of probation) leaves begging several important questions about exactly what Hunter (and Joe, and Jim, Joe’s brother) were doing in return for millions of dollars in consulting fees. Tax evasion seems just the beginning, but let’s get very specific. For the most part, unless noted with a URL, incidents below are drawn from Hunter’s email and laptop documents (we published a dive into the laptop’s contents online in December 2020, and a deeper dive in our print edition.)
The reason we have to ask all these sticky questions is because half of Americans — including a third of Democrats — think Hunter got favorable treatment from federal prosecutors after he agreed to a sweetheart plea deal.
So Hunter, you joined the Burisma board at a salary of $83,000 a month with no obvious work duties. What was your actual job at Burisma? We ask because on April 16, 2014, while Papa Joe was vice president, he met with your business partner, Devon Archer, at the White House. Five days later, Joe travelled to Ukraine to lobby for increased fracking. Burisma was one of the few companies licensed to frack in Ukraine. Burisma made hundreds of millions of dollars from Ukraine’s new policy. Burisma paid more than $4,000,000 for your and Archer’s board memberships, including at least $1,450,000 wired directly to your accounts.
While you and Archer were serving on Burisma’s board, Ukraine’s top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, was investigating Burisma and its owner. In his official position as vice president, Biden demanded Ukraine fire Shokin, and threatened to withdraw $1 billion in U.S. military aid if it did not do so. Shokin was fired.
While serving on the Burisma board, you and Archer sought meetings with senior State Department officials, including then-Secretary of State John Kerry and then-Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken. What did you guys chat about? The reason we ask is because whatever your job description read, your value to Burisma was your perceived access to the Executive Branch. Papa Joe was at least a passive participant in the scheme, maybe more than that.
Your laptop shows you, through a number of front companies, accepted money from foreign firms and moved that money to the U.S. where it was parceled out to other entities, including Joe’s brother Jim. Some of it then went back to foreign hands. It all smells bad — multi-million dollar transfers to LLCs without employees, residences used as business addresses, legal tricks from Cyprus to the British Virgin Islands. Can you explain why your fees traveled such circuitous routes? What did you pay Brother Jim for, and why did he appear to kickback some of the money you paid him?
What is this money al about, Hunter? in 2014, you received a $3.5 million wire transfer from Elena Baturina, the richest woman in Russia and the widow of Yury Luzhkov, the former mayor of Moscow. Baturina became Russia’s only female billionaire when her company received a series of Moscow municipal contracts while her husband was mayor.
But let’s move on to China, Russia and Ukraine are so depressing. The majority of the contents of your laptop are a jumbled record of your international business ventures. Outstanding in the haystack are a large number of wire transfers to and from your clients (but no evidence of what “work” you performed for those clients. Hmm.) Those with traceable addresses appear to be mostly anonymous shell companies run out of lawyers’ offices, with no employees and fuzzy public paper trails. One typical one involved $259,845 traveling on April 2, 2018 from your Hudson West III in New York to a numbered bank account held by Cathay Bank in Asia. Hudson West was created by Hunter Biden’s own law firm, Owasco, with several Chinese nationals, including a Jianming Ye associate, Gong Wendong. Ye Jianming is chairman of CEFC China Energy, who reportedly had close ties to both the Chinese government and the PLA. He’s been arrested in China on corruption charges.
Hunter, in August 2018 you also returned $100k back to CEFC in China via its own New York subsidiary LLC, Hudson West V, whose listed address was on Foxwood Road, in New York state. That address is not a business office but instead a single family home worth over $5 million. It looks like the place has new owners, but phone records suggest two people lived there when you were in business, including Gong Wendong. Money appeared to move from physical China to virtual Hunter back to virtual China in the U.S., starting and ending in accounts tied to Gong Wendong after touching base with Hunter, a potential indicator of laundering. Chinese money in China changed into Chinese money in America. Caution is needed; while what looks like American money laundering at first glance may indeed be so, or could be designed to hide the cash from the Chinese government while staying inside American law, a quasi-illegal service you possibly supplied. Is that what you were really up to, fee-for-service to the Chinese? Enquiring minds and all that, you know.
The Foxwood address also appears on millions of dollars worth of bank transfers among Cathay Bank, CEFC, and multiple semi-anonymous LLCs and hedge funds. One single transfer alone to Hudson West III on August 8, 2017 represented the movement of $5 million from Northern Capital International, which appears to be a Chinese government-owned import-export front company. What was that all about?
In addition, the house on Foxwood was the mailing address for a secured VISA card in the name of your company, Hudson West III. The card is funded by someone unnamed through Cathay Bank for $99,000 and guaranteed by someone’s checking account held by Cathay worth $450,000. Shared users of the card are you, Hunter, and Gong Wendong. The card was opened as CEFC secured a stake in a Russian state-owned energy company. Biden and others subsequently used the credit card to purchase extravagant items, including airline tickets and things at Apple stores, pharmacies, hotels, and restaurants. A Senate report characterized these transactions as “potential financial criminal activity.” Putting money on a secured VISA card in lieu of a direct wire transfer may be seen by some as an attempt to obscure the source of the money and thus allow you not to claim it as income but you didn’t do that, did you Hunter?
Jim Biden, Joe’s brother, was also an authorized user of the credit card. Jim over the years has been a nightclub owner, insurance broker, political consultant, and investor. When he ran into financial trouble having triple mortgaged his home, he was bailed out via loans from Joe and you, Hunter, and by a series of Joe’s donors. Jim also received a loan of $500k from John Hynansky, a Ukrainian-American businessman and longtime donor to Joe Biden’s campaigns. This all was in 2015, at the same time the then-vice president oversaw U.S. policy toward the country. As a senator, Joe Biden made use of a private jet owned by Hynansky’s son.
That will leave undigested the bigger tale of President Joe Biden, who ran in part on an anti-corruption platform following the Trump family escapades. While Joe Biden says he regrets meeting with the Burisma official, he did indeed take the meeting as VP. It’s always easier to apologize when caught than seek permission in advance in Joe’s world. Is that what your dad always says, Hunter?
A 2017 email chain involving Hunter brokering an ultimately failed deal for a new venture with old friend CEFC, the Chinese energy company, described a 10 percent set-aside for the “big guy,” whom former Hunter Biden partner Tony Bobulinski publicly identified as Joe Biden. Joe also took Hunter to China with him in December 2013 on Air Force 2, and met with Chinese leaders while Hunter tried to make deals on his own. It was Joe’s donors and pals who bailed out brother Jim over the years with sweetheart loans.
There is a lot more but you get the picture. A lot of appearance of improprietous malarkey from a senior statesman like your dad who should have known better. In places like China and the Ukraine, where corruption is endemic, it is assumed the sons of powerful men have access to their father. You traded on those assumptions for millions of dollars, and Papa Joe stood by understanding what was happening. Every father wants to help his son, and we can imagine you went to his dad time after time, pleading for just one more little favor to get you past your sordid past.
Joe Biden said of Hunter, “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.” So Hunter, help us out. Explain.
Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
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