Hunter Biden referred to his father as “the chairman” in a group chat with business partners working to secure a multimillion-dollar deal with a Chinese energy company, according to evidence produced by House lawmakers investigating President Biden over corruption allegations.
The president has denied having a role in any of his family’s businesses, and Democrats accuse Republicans of conducting a political witch hunt that has turned up no evidence of corruption.
Republican lawmakers are piecing together a pattern of Mr. Biden’s alleged involvement through witness testimony and bank records.
Lawmakers say they now have evidence that Mr. Biden, at the very least, met with most of the foreign business executives who later awarded millions of dollars to his family, including Ye Jianming, chairman of CEFC, an energy company tied to the Chinese Communist Party.
House lawmakers on the Oversight and Accountability Committee said this week that Mr. Biden met with many of Hunter Biden’s business associates dating to his time as vice president.
“The committee can now confirm Joe Biden met with nearly every foreign national who funneled money to his son,” lawmakers said in a readout of its interview with former Biden family business partner Rob Walker.
House investigators obtained electronic messages from Mr. Walker dating to 2017. Hunter Biden appeared to reference his father’s knowledge of and involvement in a deal with CEFC, which ultimately paid Biden family members and associates millions of dollars.
In a message to business associate Tony Bobulinski, the president’s son declared “an impasse of sorts” in trying to agree on structuring the lucrative CEFC deal with the associates, himself and Mr. Biden’s brother James.
Hunter Biden told Mr. Bobulinski that “my chairman gave an emphatic no” to the proposed terms, as did an attorney for James Biden.
In a subsequent chat, Mr. Walker explained the message to Mr. Bobulinski.
“When he said ‘his chairman,’ he was talking about his dad, and I think your dismissal of it may have offended him a bit, but you didn’t know what he was talking about,” Mr. Walker told Mr. Bobulinski.
Hunter Biden and his associates began working with CEFC while his father was vice president, but the meetings in question in the electronic messages took place after Mr. Biden left office and before he was elected president in 2020.
During a closed-door deposition this month, House lawmakers asked Mr. Walker to explain Mr. Biden’s role in the CEFC deal and his title as “chairman.”
Mr. Walker said he wasn’t sure what Hunter Biden meant. He suggested that the president’s son was in the throes of drug addiction at the time.
“Do I really know he was talking about his father? No. At first glance, yes,” Mr. Walker said, according to a transcript of the interview. “If I re-read it, I’m not positive.”
Mr. Walker’s testimony is central to a House investigation into Mr. Biden’s role in helping his son Hunter and his brother James secure foreign business deals. By leveraging the Biden name, they raked in millions of dollars from CEFC, which was looking to make inroads into the U.S. energy market.
Mr. Walker told investigators that Mr. Biden stopped by a March 2017 business meeting between Hunter Biden and several CEFC executives, including Mr. Ye, at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington.
They were eating lunch in a private dining room when the former vice president stopped by. Mr. Walker said Mr. Biden stayed for about 10 minutes and talked “pleasantries” with the group but did not delve into their proposed business venture.
A few days later, Mr. Walker’s company received a $3 million payment from State Energy HK, an affiliate of CEFC.
Biden family members received a third of the money, but not in one payment. Hunter Biden asked Mr. Walker to send it in smaller installments and to distribute it to various family and business accounts over weeks.
James Biden and Joe Biden’s daughter-in-law, Hallie Biden, received some of the money. Hunter Biden was romantically involved with Hallie Biden for several months after the death of her husband, Beau Biden, who was Hunter’s brother.
Mr. Walker told investigators he did not know why Hunter Biden wanted the payments broken up. The two men parted ways as business associates years ago, he said, after Hunter Biden got angry at Mr. Walker for asking him to repay a $50,000 loan. Mr. Walker said Hunter Biden has never repaid the money and the two have not spoken “in a long, long time.”
Mr. Walker told investigators he didn’t remember the details of a key conversation with an FBI agent who interviewed him in December 2020 as part of the federal investigation into Hunter Biden’s failure to pay taxes. He said he did not recall answering “yeah” when the agent asked him whether Hunter Biden tried to set up business meetings between his associates and his father while his father was vice president.
“I don’t recall Hunter setting up business meetings [with Mr. Biden and] anybody that he and I were doing business with,” Mr. Walker told House lawmakers.
Although Mr. Walker confirmed Mr. Biden’s 2017 meeting with Mr. Ye, other witnesses testified about additional meetings.
Former Biden business associate Devon Archer said Mr. Biden, while vice president, met with Romanian oligarch Kenes Rakishev in April 2014 at a private dinner at Cafe Milano in Georgetown.
Mr. Rakishev, who was paying Hunter Biden as a consultant, soon after wired an additional $142,000 to Hunter Biden so he could buy himself a Porsche.
Mr. Biden appeared at another Cafe Milano dinner in April 2015, when Hunter Biden was dining with a different set of business partners, among them Russian oligarch Yelena Baturina, a real estate investor and wife of the former mayor of Moscow. Weeks before the Cafe Milano dinner with the vice president, Ms. Baturina sent $3.5 million to a shell company that later transferred $2.7 million to a bank account used jointly by Archer and Hunter Biden.
According to Archer, who is facing prison on an unrelated fraud conviction, Vadym Pozharsky, an executive with Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, was also a guest at the April 2015 Cafe Milano dinner that Mr. Biden attended.
At the time, Hunter Biden was earning a $1 million annual salary serving on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company. According to Archer, Mr. Pozharsky and other Burisma officials wanted Hunter Biden’s father to help shake off a corruption probe overseen by Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. Mr. Biden later helped oust Mr. Shokin from the position.
Hunter Biden introduced his father to Chinese business partner Jonathan Li during the vice president’s trip to China in December 2013. Mr. Biden wrote college recommendations for Mr. Li’s two children. Mr. Li was chairman of BHR, an investment fund controlled by the Bank of China that later included Hunter Biden as a board member.
Lawmakers involved in the impeachment investigation privately interviewed Mr. Bobulinski on Tuesday.
In a closed-door interview, Mr. Bobulinski said the Chinese used CEFC to make inroads into the Obama White House through Mr. Biden.
He said CEFC secured lucrative transactions with Hunter Biden, beginning in 2015 through Mr. Biden’s exit from the White House in January 2017, at the end of his second term as vice president. According to Republican lawmakers, CEFC paid Hunter Biden $4.8 million in 2017 and 2018.
In an opening statement provided to The Washington Times, Mr. Bobulinski contradicted Mr. Biden’s claim that he knew nothing about his son’s business transactions.
“Joe Biden was aware of the CEFC transaction, enabled it and had a constitutional responsibility and obligation to the American people to shut it down before it began,” Mr. Bobulinski told the panel.
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.