OPINION:
The plan was so simple for one of the great get-rich influence-peddling schemes ever run out of Washington: Cash in on then-Vice President Joe Biden’s foreign policy forays to earn millions of dollars in consulting fees.
To track son Hunter Biden’s methods, you don’t just follow the money. You follow the father.
Mr. Biden went to China in 2011 and 2013 and got heaps of compliments on its communist tyrants. Subsequently, millions flow from party-connected tycoons, split up by Hunter, his uncle James and other family members.
In 2014, then-President Barack Obama sent Mr. Biden to Ukraine to clean up the country’s corrupt ways and help it recover from a Russian invasion.
Within days, Hunter Biden was on the payroll of one of Ukraine’s most corrupt oligarchs and a tool of the very same Russia.
Around the same time, the Bidens invoked the plan to win millions from a Romanian and a Russian billionaire.
The strategy should have worked flawlessly.
President Biden has said, falsely, that he never, ever discussed his son Hunter’s foreign business adventures with him. He has also said his son never took a dime out of China.
What exposed this Biden foreign cash enterprise was subpoena power. Senate Republicans had viewed a smattering of news stories on travels with Hunter and knew his father was gearing up to run for president, so they decided to take a deep dive.
The first to document the cash haul was Republican Sens. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.
In September 2020, they issued a report on Hunter’s family business that tracked the money flow from China, Ukraine and Russia. Their staff obtained confidential Treasury Department suspicious activity reports. Banks submit these reports, known as SARs, when they suspect money laundering, sales of illicit drugs, and other illegal activity.
The full Biden haul from China is still not known. The Treasury Department has refused to turn over more SARs.
But in August 2017, with Mr. Biden no longer in office, CEFC China Energy wired $5 million to Hudson West III, one of over a dozen LLC cash drops connected to Hunter Biden. CEFC was led by Ye Jianming, a since-deposed tycoon linked to the Chinese Communist Party. The Hudson money then moved in increments to Hunter’s law firm, Owasco, totaling $4.79 million.
Hunter started wiring at least $1.398 million to his father’s brother James and his Lion Hall Group consulting firm.
James’ wife, Sara, refused to cooperate when their bank asked questions about the money’s route from China to Hudson, to Owasco to Lion Hall. The bank responded by closing the account, the Senate report said.
Father and son moved in and out of China during the elder Biden’s eight years as vice president.
Hunter made at least six business trips there from April 2010 to May 2014.
One occurred in April 2011, a few months before Dad arrived in China with a promise to open America to the communist regime.
He said in a speech to college students, “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.”
Dad butters up the Chinese. His son takes the money.
Hunter was back in China in 2013, this time with Dad on Air Force Two. It was a business trip. He introduced his father to banker Jonathan Li. Weeks later, Mr. Li and Hunter jointly established the state-backed BHR Partners private equity firm. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2020 that Hunter owns a 10% stake.
Next came Ukraine. With his father named by Mr. Obama as his point man in Kyiv, Hunter quickly landed a spot on the board of directors of Burisma, an energy conglomerate owned by the corrupt oligarch and Moscow friend Mykola Zlochevsky.
Hunter’s business partner Devon Archer, at times a White House visitor, preceded him. An email found on Hunter’s abandoned laptop shows that a Burisma corporate figure quickly won an audience at the White House with then-Vice President Biden.
The Hunter/Archer LLC Rosemont Seneca Bohai received $3.48 million from May 2014 (a month after Hunter joined the board) to February 2016. Bohai then sent $701,000 to three of Hunter Biden’s bank accounts. The Senate report notes that Mr. Zlochevsky, accused of bribes and money laundering, escaped all criticism from the vice president.
In February 2014, Vladimir Putin’s forces had invaded and seized Ukraine’s Crimea. That same month, Hunter Biden found cash from another source: Russian billionaire Elena Baturina. The widow of Moscow Mayor Yuriy Luzhkov, she wired $3.5 million to another Biden LLC, Rosemont Seneca Thornton, for “consulting.”
The Grassley-Johnson tandem lost their committee chairmanships, and with them subpoena power, in the 2020 election.
But two years later, Republicans took the House. America was treated to a new Hunter Biden sheriff, Rep. James Comer, who heads the Oversight Committee. The aggressive, media-savvy Kentucky congressman believes the president is corrupt. With SARs withheld by Biden loyalists, Mr. Comer turned to find bank records.
Mr. Comer unearthed another foreign money source: Hong Kong. Two months after Mr. Biden left office, State Energy HK, a Chinese company, wired $3 million to the LLC of a Biden family friend, Rob Walker. His company sent $1 million to a second company owned by a Biden associate who sent $1 million over three months to various Biden family bank accounts.
In May, Mr. Comer disclosed yet another foreign money pot: Romania.
The cash followed the China-Ukraine game plan. Then-Vice President Biden visited Romania in May 2014 and a year later hosted Romania’s leader at the White House.
Two months after that visit, Romanian businessman Gabriel Popoviciu’s Cyprus company wired $3 million to Mr. Walker’s LLC, which sent $1 million to Biden family members. Mr. Popoviciu, like Ukraine’s Mr. Zlochevsky, is accused of corruption, a House committee memo said.
“The Bidens intentionally sought to hide, confuse, and conceal their influence-peddling schemes, but bank records don’t lie,” Mr. Comer said. “The Bidens made millions from foreign nationals providing what seems to be no services other than access and influence.”
• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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