OPINION:
President Biden’s Dec. 6 “bunch of lies” denial on interacting with his son Hunter’s money men is a reminder of the most significant disclosure in the family’s influence-peddling saga.
Hunter himself put his dad squarely in the middle of the Biden clan’s foreign cash haul.
It happened on July 30, 2017, when Hunter was staying at Dad’s Delaware home, and Joe was in the early days of his post-vice presidency.
Hunter, desperate for a new money infusion from CEFC China Energy and its chairman, Ye Jianming, went on WhatsApp instant messaging to berate executive Raymond Zhao. Hunter threatened that Mr. Zhao “will regret not following my direction” unless he got a quick call back on his demand for $5 million. More importantly, he said his father was in the room as he typed.
President Biden denies this, but what’s important is that Hunter’s WhatsApp message showed he was willing to invoke his father’s name to get money, even coupled with threats about what the Biden family was capable of. And he was indirectly telling the Chinese ruling communists that his father was in on his schemes.
By 2017, Hunter had taken money from a list of scandal-tainted figures in China, Ukraine and Romania, and from Russian and Kazakh oligarchs.
Indeed, days after the July 30, 2017, WhatsApp message, a $5 million wire arrived at Hunter Biden’s investment house from a CEFC unit. Then, $4.8 million went to his Washington firm Owasco, according to a 2020 groundbreaking report by Senate Republicans Charles Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.
The WhatsApp text was disclosed to Congress by IRS whistleblower Gary A. Shapley. The criminal investigator executed a subpoena on Apple Inc. to extract that message and others from Hunter’s iCloud account.
The House Oversight Committee included the message in a November staff memo. It served as evidence leading up to a Republican-led party-line vote on Dec. 13 to authorize impeachment proceedings against President Biden.
A week before the vote, Mr. Biden at the White House heard a reporter’s question on why he interacted with Hunter’s business associates. “A bunch of lies,” he said. “I did not.”
That, of course, is a lie.
Let’s look at the contacts the elder Biden said never happened.
In 2013, Hunter accompanied then-Vice President Biden on a trip to China.
In Beijing, Mr. Biden and Hunter met with Chinese banker Jonathan Li. A week later, Hunter completed a deal with Mr. Li to create a private equity firm called BHR. Later, the vice president sent a letter to a college endorsing Mr. Li’s son for admission.
The letter was facilitated by Hunter’s business manager, Eric Schwerin. IRS whistleblowers found 327 emails between either the elder Biden, using a pseudonym, and Mr. Schwerin.
As vice president, Mr. Biden engaged in numerous contacts with Devon Archer. Mr. Archer and Hunter partnered on investment LLCs. And they served on the board of the Ukraine conglomerate Burisma; around the same time in 2014, Vice President Biden took on the diplomatic role of White House point man in Kyiv.
Mr. Archer told House investigators that Mr. Biden called in 20 times or more to Hunter and his foreign business associates during dinners and meetings.
Russian millionaire Yelena Baturina met with Mr. Biden at a dinner in Washington. The date came shortly after she wired one of Mr. Hunter’s investment firms, Rosemont Seneca, $3.5 million in 2014.
Also, that year saw the emergence of Kazakh millionaire oligarch Kenes Rakishev. He wired over $142,000 to another Hunter-Archer cash drop, Rosemont Seneca Bohai, for the express purpose of buying Hunter a luxury car.
Mr. Rakishev also dined with Vice President Biden at Georgetown’s Cafe Milano.
The trendy restaurant was the setting in 2015 for another high-powered Hunter-brokered dinner attended by his dad, the vice president.
This dinner also blended the Biden network of donors. From Ukraine was Vadym Pozharsky, the emissary for Burisma’s scandal-prone owner, Mykola Zlochevsky. From Kazakhstan was Karim Massimov, a career government power figure and a crony of Mr. Rakishev with whom Hunter worked on Ukraine-China energy deals.
The cozy setting put Vice President Biden in sustained close contact with Mr. Pozharsky. In emails contained in Hunter’s laptop uncovered by the New York Post, Mr. Pozharsky urged Hunter in 2014 to use his influence to end a state investigation into his boss.
Shortly thereafter in 2015, Joe Biden told Ukraine higher-ups to fire the prosecutor targeting Burisma or lose U.S. money. They fired Viktor Shokin in February 2016.
That year, Mr. Biden met with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis at the White House.
Later, scandal-scarred Romanian businessman Gabriel Popoviciu began sending money to longtime Biden family associate Rob Walker’s LLC. Over two years, the Romanian sent the LLC over $3 million. Of that, $1 million was transferred to Biden family members, including Hunter, the House Oversight Committee found.
Hunter Biden’s task was to end Romania’s prosecution of Mr. Popoviciu. He met with U.S. and Romanian diplomats.
Tony Bobulinski, a global investor, told then-Fox News show host Tucker Carlson about meeting the former vice president in a darkened hotel bar in California in 2017. He, Hunter, Hunter’s uncle James Biden and others were assembling a new investment firm, SinoHawk, in a partnership with the main Biden Chinese cash cow, CEFC Energy, and tycoon Ye Jianming.
In sum, the list of Mr. Biden’s direct contacts with Hunter Biden business associates reads this way: Hunter’s business partners Devon Archer and Eric Schwerin; Tony Bobulinski; Jonathan Li of China; Yelena Baturina, a Russian national; Karim Massimov and Kenes Rakishev of Kazakhstan; and Vadym Pozharsky of Ukraine.
Of the cast of Hunter’s funders, this update: Mr. Ye was detained in 2018 by Chinese authorities and has not been seen in public; Mr. Pozharsky’s boss, Burisma’s Mr. Zlochevsky, has been under investigation, on and off, for bribery and theft; Mr. Popoviciu fled Romania after being sentenced to seven years in prison; the U.S. Treasury Department accused a Rakishev company in 2018 of money laundering.
• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with The Washington Times.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.