Hunter Biden’s exploited laptop computer and other public disclosures show that President-elect Joseph R. Biden had at least 10 opportunities to know about his son’s extensive foreign cash flow.
The former vice president has said repeatedly that he never spoke about his son’s offshore income. The funds have included million-dollar payments from oligarchs in Moscow and Ukraine, a Kazakh investor and a Chinese tycoon with close ties to the Communist Party and People’s Liberation Army.
“I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” Mr. Biden said in 2019.
Asked during the presidential transition whether he still believes his son’s email-brimming laptop is part of a Russian plot, Mr. Biden said yes.
In their Sept. 23 Senate report, Republicans labeled Hunter Biden’s extensive foreign deals with unsavory people as “conflicts of interest.”
The Washington Times acquired a copy of the hard drive from a laptop computer that Hunter Biden left at a repair shop in Wilmington, Delaware, in April 2019 and never retrieved. More emails from other sources have emerged. Together with the Senate report, they show extensive financial networking between the Biden family and foreigners.
• Breitbart News cited newly disclosed emails by Bevan Cooney, a onetime Hunter Biden associate. They reveal how Hunter business partner Devon Archer arranged a November 2011 White House visit and meeting with Vice President Biden for a high-powered group of Chinese industrialists and communists. Cooney is serving a prison term in a fraud case that also ensnared Archer, who is due to be sentenced in federal court.
In 2011, Hunter Biden and Archer were seeking Chinese money for their various investments. Hunter Biden traveled to China at least six times from 2010 to 2016.
“Couldn’t confirm this with Hunter on line but we got him his meeting at the WH Monday for the Chinese folks,” Archer said in an email to an associate on Nov. 11, 2011.
Archive records show the Chinese delegation, the prestigious and semi-official China Entrepreneur Club, visited the White House three days later. The general secretary of the Chinese Energy Fund Co. later said that among the officials they met was the U.S. vice president, Breitbart disclosed.
Three months earlier, Vice President Biden visited China and delivered a policy speech at Sichuan University.
“In order to cement this robust partnership, we have to go beyond close ties between Washington and Beijing, which we’re working on every day, go beyond it to include all levels of government, go beyond it to include classrooms and laboratories, athletic fields and boardrooms,” Mr. Biden said.
• In a well-publicized trip, Hunter Biden flew with Vice President Biden in 2013 to China, where Hunter met with Chinese financier Jonathan Li Xiangsheng.
In 2011, Hunter Biden had dinner with Mr. Li.
“It is always my greatest pleasure meeting you guys,” Mr. Li said in an email to Hunter Biden and his business associates. “I enjoyed the dinner as much as you did, and look forward to seeing you next time.”
One of the next times was the 2013 trip to China during which Hunter Biden arranged for Mr. Li to shake hands with his father in a hotel lobby, The New Yorker reported. Weeks later, Mr. Li and Hunter Biden formed Bohai Harvest RST (BHR) investment firm.
Hunter Biden’s spokesman told NBC News that the fund had been in the works for months. He was not paid as a board member and invested $420,000 after his father left office.
“I have not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life,” Joseph R. Biden said during a debate with President Trump.
“Joe Biden has never even considered being involved in business with his family, nor in any overseas business whatsoever,” campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said at the time. “He has never held stock in any such business arrangements, nor has any family member or any other person ever held stock for him.”
Hunter Biden’s spokesman did not respond to a Washington Times message.
• In April and May 2014, Hunter Biden and his business partner, Archer, gained seats on the board of Burisma Holdings, an energy firm in Ukraine that the State Department believes to be corrupt. At the time, Vice President Biden had become President Obama’s point man on Ukraine.
An email from Eric D. Schwerin, Hunter Biden’s business associate at their Rosemont Seneca Advisors firm in Washington, shows that Mr. Schwerin was talking to the vice president’s office.
“When I talked to your Dad’s office they seemed to think the Yanukovich connection was incorrect and that the guy sold in 2011,” Mr. Schwerin tells Hunter on May 13, 2014, in reference to a Wall Street Journal story.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted and fled to Russia in February, two months before Archer and Mr. Biden were put on the Burisma board.
• Hunter Biden’s regular Burisma contact was Vadym Pozharskyi, Burisma’s corporate liaison to the board and a close aide to the firm’s owner, Mykola Zlochevsky.
One of Mr. Pozharskyi’s goals was to persuade the Obama administration to end investigations into Burisma in Ukraine. In April 2015, Mr. Pozharskyi emailed Hunter Biden to thank him for setting up a meeting with the vice president.
“Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent some time together,” Mr. Pozharskyi said in an email first reported by the New York Post. “It’s really an honor and pleasure.”
• Hunter Biden also was trying to make deals in Kazakhstan. An undated photo surfaced at an anti-corruption website, Kazakhstan Initiative on Asset Recovery, showing Hunter Biden posing in a photo with his father and two Kazakhs: Kenges Rakishev and former Prime Minister Karim Massimov.
The British Daily Mail reported that Hunter Biden worked from 2012 to 2014 as a middleman for Mr. Rakishev, a politically connected millionaire and investor. The Mail said emails show the two held extensive meetings.
A Senate Republican report said Mr. Rakishev’s Novatus Holding company used a Latvian bank to wire $142,300 to Devon Archer’s Rosemont Seneca Bohai. The purpose: a new car. The report described the firm as a shell company.
The year 2017 appeared to be Hunter Biden’s best for securing Chinese investments from tycoon Ye Jianming and his Chinese Energy Fund Co. CEFC wired $5 million to a fund called Hudson West in New York, which sent most of the money to Hunter Biden’s Washington law firm, the Republican Senate report said.
• In February 2017, Joseph R. Biden agreed to his son’s request that the former vice president send a letter to Brown University recommending Jonathan Li’s son, Chris, for admission.
“Just see the email,” Mr. Li says to Hunter Biden upon receiving a letter copy. “It is just great.”
• Former Hunter Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski was set to head a new investment venture, SinoHawk Holdings. In May 2017, he found himself in a Los Angeles hotel bar meeting with Joseph R. Biden, who was sizing up his son’s new partner. The plan was for SinoHawk to invest Mr. Ye’s cash flow.
• That month, Mr. Ye came to the U.S. His general manager emailed James Gilliar, a Hunter business associate, saying “Chairman Ye is more than happy to meet H and the family in NYC on 5th or 6th of May.”
• On May 13, 2017, Mr. Bobulinski was on an email thread with Hunter Biden and Mr. Gilliar discussing how to divide SinoHawk equity. Mr. Bobulinski would be the CEO and Hunter the chairman if CEFC agreed.
Among the Biden shares, the split would be 20% Hunter, 10% for James Biden and “10 held by H for the big guy?” Mr. Bobulinski told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson that the “big guy” is Joseph R. Biden.
The partnership fell through. Chinese authorities arrested Mr. Ye in March 2018, and CEFC went bankrupt.
Hunter Biden once texted his daughter: “I hope you all can do what I did, and pay for everything for this entire family for 30 years and it has been tough. It’s really hard but don’t worry, unlike Pop, I won’t make you give me half your salary.”
• A Sept. 21, 2017, email obtained by the Daily Caller shows that Hunter Biden planned to set up a joint office in Washington that would include his father and Gongwen Dong, the top aide to CEFC Chairman Ye.
“[P]lease have keys made available for new office mates,” Hunter Biden wrote to the general manager of his former D.C. office building. He listed his office mates as his dad, stepmother Jill Biden, uncle James Biden and Mr. Gongwen.
Hunter Biden said the office sign would read: The Biden Foundation and Hudson West (CEFC US).
On Capitol Hill, two Republican senators, Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, have jointly investigated two main subjects: the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe and Biden family finances.
With the Democratic Senate takeover and Joseph R. Biden controlling the executive branch, the two Republicans face a limited ability to demand documents and witnesses.
• Rowan Scarborough can be reached at rscarborough@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.