THE BIG TALK
An occasional interview series with Americans who are challenging the status quo.
If Joseph R. Biden is headed to the White House, M.A. Taylor thinks it is more important than ever that Americans understand just what kind of financial arrangements his family has with China and its communist government.
His film “Riding The Dragon: The Biden Chinese Secrets” has racked up more than 2 million online views, but that’s just the start, he said.
“The documentary has a completely new relevance than it had before,” he said. “The film has a new mission going forward.”
“Riding the Dragon” debuted two months before the presidential election. Its curtain rose weeks before a laptop thought to belong to Mr. Biden’s son Hunter surfaced with emails and documents outlining his many business deals abroad.
Most alarming, Biden detractors say, are the emails detailing Hunter Biden’s deal with a Chinese company as his father as vice president became the point man for the Obama administration’s much-ballyhooed “Asian pivot.”
Should Mr. Biden occupy the White House in January, as appears likely, the threads of those deals must be laid bare, Mr. Taylor said.
“Joe Biden said the election was a matter of character, and I absolutely agree,” he said.
The web can be confusing.
On the Beijing side are the Aviation Industry Corp. (AVIC), the China General Nuclear Power Corp., Bohai Harvest and other companies. On U.S. shores are ties with Rosemont Seneca Partners, Rosemont Realty, Burnham Asset Management and others.
The documentary ties all those together as an anonymous hand links yarn on a corkboard between photos and notecards of the principal players. It also features chapters punctuated by roiling clouds of dust and smoke to a sometimes ominous soundtrack.
“It is a movie,” Mr. Taylor said.
Yet its subject matter is anything but lighthearted. The anchor is Peter Schweizer, an author and political consultant who is perhaps best known for his 2015 book, “Clinton Cash,” which exposed the vast amounts of money moving through Bill and Hillary Clinton’s charitable organizations.
The movie deals exclusively with the deals in China and mentions only in passing Hunter Biden’s arrangements with companies in Ukraine. His father also served as the point man in the Obama administration in Ukraine, and Hunter Biden cemented lucrative deals after traveling there with his father.
All of that and the connection to Blaze TV, long associated with conservative provocateur Glenn Beck, are enough for liberal outlets to dismiss the movie as partisan spin.
Mr. Taylor acknowledged that accusation would be lodged but said “Riding the Dragon’s” content belies it.
“Nowhere do we say, ’Vote for Donald Trump’ or ’Don’t vote for Joe Biden,’” he said. “Instead, it just asks, ’Why did he do it?’ The decisions made, their facilitation and their timing are all suspect, and these are all things that should be looked into.”
With the presidential vote finished, Mr. Taylor said, the movie provides a road map for the media and law enforcement to follow. Given China’s status as a rival superpower, arrests and investigations tied to China’s suspected theft of sensitive and copyrighted U.S. technology, and now Mr. Biden’s apparent rise to America’s policy chief, it would be reckless to ignore these matters, he said.
“In the coming months or years, we should get a very clear picture of what happened, what exactly, say, ’Kirin Global Enterprises Ltd.’ is,” Mr. Taylor said. “My issue is corruption. Nothing in the film is particularly illegal. It’s not illegal to sit on a board or get paid money for your services.”
“But Bohair Investments and AVIC didn’t invest in Disney. They invested in U.S. companies with dual-use technology,” he said about their 2015 purchase of Henniges Automotive.
Mr. Taylor, 41, made the film with his wife, Michelle, as a producer. The money needed to make the film was raised privately. Pointing to Hollywood’s increasing reliance on huge private-sector loans, he said, that means “Riding the Dragon” was “made like any other movie.”
Despite the long odds that a Biden Justice Department would pursue the Biden family’s deals in China, Ukraine and other foreign countries, Mr. Taylor remains optimistic.
He is convinced that a special prosecutor should be appointed to investigate the matter. Even without a special prosecutor, he said, fast-moving technology and “citizen journalism” will unravel some of the remaining questions.
He was that happen with his other documentaries: “Clinton Cash,” another collaboration with Mr. Schweizer, and “The Creepy Line,” about social media giants censoring content uncomfortable for Democrats.
“I’m optimistic about America. I don’t think, ’Oh, if this guy gets elected the world is doomed,’” he said. “Things are constantly evolving. As long as innovation stays alive, the truth will come out.”
The truth here, he said, terrifies him.
Mr. Taylor drew a comparison between the myriad investments foreign entities made in various Clinton nonprofits and the billions of dollars paid to outfits created by Biden family members.
“It’s so sloppy it terrifies me,” he said. “If you look at the Clinton Foundation or the Clinton Global Initiative, it’s just a more elegant design, it’s smarter. The Clinton deals are sort of less dangerous, if you will. There’s no threat of an enhanced China in terms of technology for new fighter jets or give them a leg up in the South China Sea.”
“Riding the Dragon” details suspect deals made in China by Hunter Biden, not Joe Biden. Is there daylight between those?
“How is this even a question?” Mr. Taylor said. “Joe Biden said this election is about character, and I absolutely agree. At the end of the day, all of this was facilitated by Joe Biden, and Hunter was his proxy. It all happened when Joe Biden was the Asian point man, so he is either a terrible diplomat or he knew.”
• James Varney can be reached at jvarney@washingtontimes.com.
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