For years now, Hunter Biden’s business dealings with China have been a topic of great scrutiny. Now, as a federal investigation into his taxes and long-term connections with Chinese corporations gains traction, new findings have come to light.
According to several new reports, the son of sitting U.S. President Joe Biden signed a contract with an executive with state-owned Chinese energy company CEFC back in August 2017. CEFC, which is financed by Chinese government development banks, is tied to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and linked to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
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“Over the course of 14 months, the Chinese energy conglomerate and its executives paid $4.8 million to entities controlled by Hunter Biden and his uncle, according to government records, court documents and newly disclosed bank statements, as well as emails contained on a copy of a laptop hard drive that purportedly belonged to Hunter Biden,” The Washington Post reported.
Broken laptop
The laptop was reportedly dropped off by Hunter Biden at a Delaware repair shop in April 2019 and was never collected. The owner of the shop then turned it over to the FBI in December of that year.
According to documents reviewed by The New York Times, a copy of the laptop’s drive was then obtained by Rudy Giuliani and other advisers to then-President Donald Trump a few months before the 2020 election.
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The files revealed that Hunter’s uncle James Biden (the president’s brother), and the contract in question, provided Hunter Biden a one-time retainer of $500,000, in addition to monthly stipends of $100,000 for him and $65,000 for his uncle.
While many aspects of Hunter Biden’s financial arrangement with CEFC have been previously reported and were included in a Republican-led Senate report from 2020, both the Washington Post and the New York Times confirmed many of the key details and authenticated several documents revealing a complex web of ties between the Biden family’s business dealings with top-tier Chinese executives.
“When you look at the cluster of who provided the funds to the Bidens, and the fact that the Bidens did not really provide anything tangible in return, this has all the markings of elite capture and of a Chinese intelligence operation,” Peter Peter Schweizer, author of “Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win, told The Epoch Times.
Murky connections
Schweizer said that Hunter’s business dealings with high-ranking officials and businessmen within the Chinese regime should “raise the same alarms” as if “Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan were found to have received millions from Russian businessmen connected to the KGB during the Cold War.”
“We’re very clear that the Bidens got some $31 million, based on the laptop, from a series of deals that happened beginning when Joe Biden was vice president of the United States. And those deals happened courtesy of four Chinese businessmen,” Schweizer said.
The Chinese businessmen that worked with the younger Biden were “directly linked” to the highest levels of Chinese intelligence, Schweizer told The Epoch Times.
“That’s what happened here. All we’re doing is replacing the KGB with the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS). It’s the exact same story and it ought to be setting off the exact alarm bells,” he said, referring to the Chinese regime’s top intelligence agency.
Deep ties with China
According to Schweizer’s findings, one of the businessmen Hunter dealt with was a Chinese tycoon named Che Feng, who helped him and his associates secure a deal involving a Chinese investment fund called Bohai Harvest RST (BHR). Schweizer said the deal netted him about $20 million.
Following that deal, Rosemont Seneca Partners, a U.S. investment and advisory firm Hunter co-founded in Shanghai in 2013 became one of the shareholders of BHR, and the younger Biden was promptly offered a seat on its board of directors. In October 2019 however, George Mesires, Hunter Biden’s attorney, issued a statement stating that Hunter had decided to resign from his seat on the BHR’s board.
Throughout all this time, Hunter Biden still held a 10-percent stake in BHR but divested as of November last year, Schweizer said.
In addition, Che was business partners with Ma Jian, who was the vice minister of China’s MSS before he was found guilty of “accepting bribes, insider trading, and making ‘coercive’ business deals.” Ma is now serving a life sentence in China after being convicted in December 2018 amid a sweeping anti-corruption campaign spearheaded by Chinese leader Xi Jinping targeting all levels of the government.
According to Chinese state-media, Che was also placed under investigation by the Party’s disciplinary authorities in June 2015.
“[Che] would fade from the [BHR] deal after both he and Ma were arrested and charged with money laundering and bribery, respectively. But the partnership between Hunter and Chinese officials was off and running,” Schweizer said in his book.
US applies pressure
On April 13, 16 Republican House lawmakers sent a joint letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, calling on the Department of Justice to brief Congress on U.S. attorney David Weiss’s investigation into Hunter Biden’s business activities with China and Ukraine.
“Congress has a constitutional obligation to conduct oversight of the Executive Branch and a moral obligation to examine if the President of the United States or any senior official in his administration is ethically compromised or injured,” the letter stated.
Hunter Biden and his attorney did not respond to numerous messages and declined to comment on the ongoing federal investigation into Hunter’s taxes. The White House also declined to respond on the record but pointed to previous statements that the President has not taken part in any business dealings involving his family.
