The tactic by former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Rep. Adam B. Schiff and other Democrats to blame the Hunter Biden laptop scandal on “Russian disinformation” backfired badly in the mind of former Biden family business partner Tony Bobulinski.
It was after the unfounded Russian conspiracy chatter started that, Mr. Bobulinski said, he decided to break from the Biden clan. He became the cash-for-influence scandal’s first whistleblower to clear his name and expose Joseph Biden as, he says, a liar.
Mr. Bobulinski watched as Mr. Schiff, California Democrat and chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, went on cable TV news to pronounce the leak of Hunter Biden messages as a Russian plot. At the Oct. 22 presidential debate, Democratic nominee Biden followed suit.
Mr. Bobulinski, who was a business partner in SinoHawk Holdings with Hunter and his uncle, James Biden, became incensed. His name is on the cache of laptop text messages and emails, which he has verified. Mr. Biden and Mr. Schiff essentially were calling him, a Navy veteran from a military family, a Russian agent.
His whistleblowing reached a zenith Tuesday night when he appeared on Fox News in an exclusive interview with Tucker Carlson.
“I was hoping the Bidens would do the right thing or Schiff would retract his statement, but I could not allow another minute, another hour or a day for my family’s name to be associated or muddied up around Russian disinformation,” Mr. Bobulinski said.
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Mr. Bobulinski believes the laptop story is just as it looks: Hunter Biden brought his MacBook Pro to a repair shop in Wilmington, Delaware, in April 2019 and abandoned it. Months later, the shop owner turned over the computer to the FBI and copied a hard drive for President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani.
Mr. Giuliani released the messages from the hard drive to show what he said were family members capitalizing on the Biden name to rake in cash from foreign political players.
Mr. Bobulinski began his campaign by issuing a statement contradicting Joseph Biden’s assertion that, as vice president, he never talked business with son Hunter or his partners. Mr. Bobulinski, in fact, met with Mr. Biden in a darkened Beverly Hilton Hotel bar in May 2017 to plot Hunter and James Biden’s next financial move.
Joseph Biden said in August 2019: “I have never discussed with my son or my brother or anyone else anything having to do with their businesses. Period.”
Mr. Bobulinski issued a second statement on the eve of the Oct. 22 presidential debate in Nashville, Tennessee, which he attended.
Before those momentous steps, he talked by telephone with Biden family friend Rob Walker in one last bid to win a retraction.
“And so I called Rob Walker, and I told him that if that statement isn’t retracted by Congressman Schiff by midnight on Sunday, then I was going on record and I was disclosing all the facts to the American government, to the American citizens and the world,” Mr. Bobulinski told Mr. Carlson.
A tape recording reveals that Mr. Walker responded, “Tony, you’re just going to bury all of us, man.”
There was no retraction from Mr. Biden, Mr. Schiff nor any other Democrat pitching the Russian angle.
Mr. Schiff has played the “Russia card” before. He and former President Barack Obama’s intelligence chiefs accused Mr. Trump, without evidence, of being a Russian agent.
Mr. Schiff also embraced British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s Kremlin-fed dossier financed by Democrats and stocked with false claims that Mr. Trump conspired with Moscow to interfere in the 2016 election.
He also joined other Democrats in asserting that a Sept. 23 Senate Republican report on Hunter Biden’s finances was infiltrated by a pro-Russia Ukrainian politician.
Sens. Chuck E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, and Ron Johnson, Wisconsin Republican, who commissioned the report, said that they never communicated with the Ukrainian official and that Democrats concocted the tale.
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe has said there is no evidence that Russia had any role in the Hunter Biden laptop, and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has said Mr. Schiff is lying.
Mr. Schiff’s spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
Burnishing his credentials, Mr. Bobulinski told Mr. Carlson: “I held a top-secret clearance from the [National Security Agency] and the [Department of Energy]. I served this country for four years in one of the most elite environments in the world, Naval Nuclear Power Training Command. And to have a congressman out there speaking about Russian disinformation or Joe Biden at a public debate referencing Russian disinformation, when he knows he sat face-to-face with me that I was traveling around the world with his son and his brother, to say that and associate that with my name is absolutely disgusting to me.”
He added: “And that’s why I’m sitting here having this. I assure you, this is the absolute last place I want to be right now and the last thing I want to be doing right now.”
The Senate Republican report documented money flowing to Hunter Biden and partner Devon Archer from oligarchs in Moscow and Ukraine and from Ye Jianming, chairman of CEFC, a huge Chinese energy company. The bank wire transfers were contained in suspicious activity reports submitted by financial institutions to the Treasury Department and obtained by Mr. Johnson and Mr. Grassley.
In other words, the full breadth of Hunter Biden’s financial gains from foreign actors is not in the report.
There is an example of Hunter Biden sharing money with uncle James Biden. Hunter received $4 million from CEFC that he wired to a shell company, Hudson West III LLC. From there, he sent $1.3 million in installments to James and Sara Biden. Their bank closed their account when they refused to document what they did to obtain the money.
Mr. Bobulinski said he had no idea Hunter Biden was removing money from China until the Senate report appeared.
• Rowan Scarborough can be reached at rscarborough@washingtontimes.com.
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