An Arkansas judge overseeing a paternity lawsuit against Hunter Biden has granted the president’s son’s motion to shield his financial disclosures from public view as he fights to reduce child support payments for his estranged daughter.
Circuit Judge Holly Meyer recently ruled in favor of Mr. Biden’s request to keep his financial details under lock and key. She said the “court has no concern for the political nature or aspects surrounding the case.”
The ruling signaled that the case would not get caught up in the investigations of the Biden family’s far-flung foreign business deals and suspicions of influence peddling.
“This case is about child support and the court has treated and will continue to treat these parties as any other members of this judicial district,” Judge Meyer wrote. “The court’s goal is not to be opaque, but to be efficient and not to burden the parties. … The court has balanced the competing interests of the parties in making this order.”
The ruling is the latest in a multiyear court battle between Hunter Biden and Lunden Roberts, the mother of his 4-year-old daughter conceived during what Mr. Biden described in his 2021 memoir as a ‘rampage’ after his 2017 divorce from Kathleen Buhle.
Ms. Roberts reportedly worked as a stripper under the stage name “Dallas” at a Washington club that Mr. Biden frequented.
Court filings reveal that Ms. Roberts was also on Mr. Biden’s payroll during her pregnancy with his daughter.
In a December 2019 filing as part of the paternity case, Ms. Roberts disclosed that she “received money” from a company listed by Mr. Biden as one he “owns or controls” from May 2018 to November 2018.
“She never received a tax document for these payments,” the disclosure says.
Text messages retrieved from Hunter Biden’s discarded laptop computer revealed that the company that paid Ms. Roberts was Rosemont Seneca, an investment management firm that Mr. Biden co-founded in 2009.
The firm also has been implicated in international transactions, including big-money deals in China, Ukraine and Russia, that have drawn the attention of congressional investigators.
In December 2018, Mr. Biden messaged his assistant at Rosemont Seneca for information about who was on the firm’s payroll.
“And just for clarification who is payroll paid to now and for past nine months?” he wrote.
“Past nine months has been you, me, Lunden, Hallie, Liz & Erin,” his assistant said. “But currently only you me & Erin.”
Lunden was a reference to Lunden Roberts.
Mr. Biden denied that he was the father of Ms. Roberts’ child until he was forced to submit to a DNA test as part of the paternity lawsuit, which Ms. Roberts filed in 2019.
In a December 2019 custody filing, Ms. Roberts said Mr. Biden is “a complete stranger” to his daughter.
“The defendant has had no involvement in the child’s life since the child’s birth, nor interacted with the child, never parented the child, never made or even participated in health-related decisions for the child, never interacted with the child’s medical professionals, never seen the child, and could not identify the child out of a photo lineup,” the filing reads.
The White House has glossed over the president’s out-of-wedlock granddaughter. It did not give her a Christmas stocking for the first two holiday seasons but displayed Christmas stockings over the State Dining Room mantle for all of the president’s other grandchildren.
Hunter Biden has fought Ms. Roberts’ request that their child use his last name.
In December, Ms. Roberts petitioned the court to grant her child a name change. She argued that “the Biden name is now synonymous with being well educated successful, financially acute and politically powerful.”
“This child’s father was a wildly successful businessman, acquiring seats on the board of a foreign corporation making a good salary, fundraising from overseas investors, working for large credit card companies, acting as a powerful lobbyist, and is now, apparently, a famous artist,” the motion states. “The child would benefit from carrying the Biden family name, just like her father and other family members.”
Mr. Biden called the request “political warfare” against his family in a January motion to block the name change.
Mr. Biden’s financial clout has remained central to the court battle.
His financial records were filed under seal in December 2019 before the court ordered him the following month to pay child support retroactively to November 2018 and going forward. The sum of the monthly payments Mr. Biden owes is redacted in the court order.
In September, Mr. Biden asked the court to reduce the amount owed in monthly child support payments because of a “substantial material change” to his financial circumstances, “including but not limited to his income.”
The request by Mr. Biden, who pulled in more than $50,000 per month while serving on the board of a Ukrainian energy firm during his father’s vice presidency and who more recently launched a successful career as an artist netting more than $500,000 per painting, was scant in specifics about his recent financial woes.
Interest in Mr. Biden’s finances extends far beyond the Arkansas courtroom. Lawmakers are investigating the Biden family’s web of overseas moneymaking schemes, which have fueled suspicions of influence peddling. The family reaped huge profits from ventures frequently linked to countries where Mr. Biden spearheaded Obama White House policy, including China and Ukraine.
Last month, the House Oversight and Accountability Committee uncovered bank records revealing suspicious payments totaling roughly $1 million to members of the Biden family after Hunter Biden associate Rob Walker received a $3 million wire transfer from a Chinese energy company.
Mr. Walker received the multimillion-dollar wire transfer from State Energy HK Ltd., a Chinese company affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party-backed CEFC China Energy Co., just months after President Biden ended his term as vice president.
Bank records obtained by the committee reveal that Mr. Walker made payments to President Biden’s brother James Biden, son Hunter Biden and daughter-in-law Hallie Biden.
The reason for the payments, doled out just two months after Mr. Biden ended his term as vice president in 2017, remains a mystery.
Hunter Biden’s legal team said the House oversight memo exposing the suspicious payments was baseless.
“Hunter Biden, a private citizen with every right to pursue his own business endeavors, joined several business partners in seeking a joint venture with a privately owned, legitimate energy company in China,” his attorneys said. “As part of that joint venture, Hunter received his portion of good faith seed funds which he shared with his uncle, James Biden, and Hallie Biden, with whom he was involved at the time, and sharing expenses.”
The White House also brushed off the memo.
Committee Chairman James Comer, Kentucky Republican, has made the Biden family’s financial transactions a centerpiece of his investigatory agenda. Last month, he announced that the committee had gained access to a trove of suspicious activity reports involving Biden family bank accounts after months of back-and-forth with the Treasury Department.
Suspicious activity reports give banks a mechanism to flag transactions for the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
“We are going to continue to use bank documents and suspicious activity reports to follow the money trail to determine the extent of the Biden family’s business schemes, if Joe Biden is compromised by these deals and if there is a national security threat,” Mr. Comer said.
• Joseph Clark can be reached at jclark@washingtontimes.com.
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