For at least seven years, many when his father was vice president, Hunter Biden reached a lucrative deal to run a multi-million dollar investment company founded by a Chinese association.
Joe Biden states that he never talked to Hunter about his dealings and that he never benefited from any group his family created, but the emails and text messages that were found on Hunter’s laptop hard drive Biden, first published by The Post, show “The Big Boy” ”Being referenced repeatedly. A federal investigation into Hunter is underway and Republicans promise to continue investigating how Hunter benefited from his father’s name and what President-elect Biden knew.
“I’m not going to turn a blind eye,” Senate National Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) Said last week. “We’ll keep digging.”
Based on laptop information and interviews, here’s what we know about the Chinese deal:
June 2009
When the Obama-Biden administration reached the middle of its inaugural year, Hunter Biden co-founded Rosemont Seneca Partners, an investment fund, along with Christopher Heinz, stepson of Obama’s future Secretary of State John Kerry. and Devon Archer, former Kerry adviser.
April 7-9, 2010
Hunter Biden visited China as a representative of Rosemont Seneca during the second year of his father’s vice presidency. There he gained an audience with senior officials from influential state-linked companies such as the Postal Savings Bank, China Investment Corp. and the Founding Group. He was joined on the trip by James Bulger, the politically connected co-founder of the Thornton Group, an Asia-oriented financial services company.
2012
While Joe Biden was running for his second term as vice president, Hunter Biden and Devon Archer contacted Chinese financier Jonathan Li, who ran the private equity fund Bohai Capital. The trio discussed a plan to become partners in a new operation that would invest Chinese cash in companies abroad. Eighty percent of the resulting company, Bohai Harvest, was controlled by Chinese state interests.
December 2013
When Chinese President Xi Jinping alarmed the rest of Asia with an aggressive expansion of his military claims over the East China Sea, Vice President Biden was sent to Beijing to try to reduce tensions. The second son was followed by Air Force Two. While a smiling and submissive Joe Biden held a five-hour marathon meeting with Xi, Hunter met Jonathan Li in what managers at the time described as a social visit. The son even arranged a handshake between Li and his father at the U.S. delegation hotel, worrying some of the vice president’s advisers, according to the New Yorker. Ten days later, the Chinese commercial license for Bohai Harvest was approved, the company that Hunter Biden and Devon Archer had been trying to launch for more than a year.
2015
At that time, Hunter Biden’s relationship with Chinese tycoon Ye Jianming “began to increase,” according to a Senate report released in September. You, the founder of the Chinese energy giant CEFC, served as the nation’s unofficial energy link with Russia.
February 23 and March 1, 2017
A month after Biden left office, a total of $ 6 million was made in bank transfers from State Energy HK Ltd., a Ye-controlled company, to Robinson Walker LLC. This company was controlled by Rob Walker, a longtime business partner of Hunter’s who had collaborated with him on at least three other companies. Walker served in both the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, and his wife, Betsy Massey Walker, is a former staff member of future First Lady Jill Biden. The joint report of the Finance Committee and the Senate Committee on Government Affairs and National Security said that “it is not clear what the true purpose of these transactions is and who the final beneficiary is.”
May 2-3, 2017
Venture capitalist Tony Bobulinski was recruited by the Bidens at this time to hold the position of CEO of Sinohawk Holdings, which he describes as a partnership between Ye’s CEFC and the Biden family. Bobulinski met twice with Joe Biden at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, where the old veep was ready to deliver a speech. Hunter, Bobulinski told The Post, “brings Joe in and introduces me, saying [Joe’s] which is helping us with the business we are doing with the Chinese. “Biden replied,” I trust you. Good luck and work hard “and added a second instruction the next morning:” Watch my son and [brother Jim Biden] and look for my family “.
Joe Biden has repeatedly denied any knowledge of his son’s business operation. In September 2020, he told reporters bluntly, “I have never spoken to my son about his business dealings abroad.”
May 11, 2017
James Gilliar, another Hunter Biden business partner, spoke with Bobulinski about how to “involve Joe” in a joint venture with CEFC. The two discussions discussed ways to make the effort look like a “really family business” in a series of text messages seen by The Post. “We get the company set up, and then we tell H and the family the big bets and we get Joe involved,” Gilliar wrote. The texts were included in a stretch of emails and documents published by Bobulinski.
May 13, 2017
Gilliar emailed Hunter Biden to outline the compensation packages for Hunter and five other people at an unspecified company. The email, which is on Hunter Biden’s laptop and appeared in a report in The Post, suggested that capital shares were being allocated to members of the Biden family, with a note stating that the 10 % would be stopped by Hunter “for the great one”, that Bobulinski definitively identified itself like Joe Biden. Three days later, according to Bobulinski, plans changed: Joe Biden’s 10% stake would remain in the name of his brother Jim.
Bobulinski expressed doubts about the wisdom of Joe Biden’s involvement in Jim Biden, in light of his brother’s political stature.
“I remember saying,‘ How are you doing? Don’t you care? Bobulinski said in an interview with Michael Goodwin of The Post.
“‘Plausible negativity,'” Jim Biden replied with a laugh, Bobulinski recalled.
May 20, 2017
“Don’t mention Joe’s involvement, it’s only when you’re face to face, I know I know, but they’re paranoid,” Gilliar instructed Bobulinksi in an encrypted WhatsApp message thread. In response, Bobulinksi wrote, “Okay, they should be paranoid about things.” Bobulinski later added what appeared to be a warning about Joe Biden’s future political plans: “It must be emphasized by H, it wants to be the reason or factor that exploits his father’s campaign.” The former veep was still two years away from announcing his third candidacy for the White House.
June 18, 2017
Hunter Biden made an urgent request to Ye Jianming to transfer $ 10 million in seed money to a new company, SinoHawk Holdings, according to an email obtained by The Post. In the letter he said he made “the best wishes of the whole Biden family” and that “We all look forward to seeing you here again soon or in Shanghai.”
Summer 2017
Hunter met with Ye in Miami to solicit donations for the U.S. World Food Program, according to the Senate report. Over dinner, they discussed details on how to help the Chinese tycoon find investments for CEFC in the United States. Ye then sent him a 2.8-carat diamond as a thank-you gift. “It just seemed weird to me,” Hunter later told The New Yorker, but he accepted the gem. The rock later became a bone of contention in the divorce proceedings between Hunter Biden and first wife Kathleen Buhle.
August 1, 2017
A hand-drawn flow chart included in the Senate report shows a breakdown of ownership of an entity called “Hudson West” with a 50/50 split between Biden and someone identified only as “president.” An email the next day strongly suggests that the “president” in question was Ye Jianming – and notes that while Hunter should have earned $ 10 million a year “just for the presentations,” these previous terms had been changed to “MUCH MORE DURING AND PROFITABLE PROVISION.”
August 8, 2017
Ye’s CEFC connected $ 5 million to Hudson West. That same day, the company initiated a series of one-year payments to Owasco, Hunter Biden’s law firm, that would total $ 4.79 million, according to the Senate report. Subsequently, Owasco sent $ 1.4 million (distributed in 20 different bank transfers) to the Lion Hall Group, a consulting firm controlled by James Biden and his wife, Sara Biden.
September 21, 2017
Hunter Biden sent an email to the Washington House of Sweden office building requesting a set of keys for the Rosemont Seneca offices to be produced by Joe Biden, Jill Biden, Jim Biden and Gongwen Dong, all of them described as “office mates,” according to another email. . Hunter Biden also noted that Gongwen Dong was an “emissary” of CEFC and Ye.
September 2017
Chi Ping, Patrick Ho, Ye’s lieutenant, agreed to pay Hunter Biden a $ 1 million withholding for “Advice on matters related to U.S. law and advice on hiring and legal analysis of any law firm or attorney. United States “, according to a commitment with a lawyer. letter obtained by The Post.
December 2018
A federal jury in Manhattan convicted Ho of violating the Foreign Corruption Practices Act by attempting to bribe government officials in Africa. He was sentenced to three years in prison.
2018
The Justice Department is opening an investigation into Hunter Biden’s tax affairs, trade links in China and Ukraine, and documents covering his involvement in more than two dozen entities, according to an Associated Press report of 13 December 2020. At the very least, a 2017 Hunter Biden email did not reveal the $ 400,000 in revenue he earned while on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
2018
Ye Jianming disappears in China amid suspicions of “economic crimes.”
April 12, 2019
Hunter Biden left a laptop with water in a Delaware computer repair shop owned by John Paul Mac Isaac looking for repairs. The computer carried a sticker for the Beau Biden Foundation, named after his dead brother. However, Hunter Biden did not search for the machine again and Mac Isaac said that after repeated attempts to contact Hunter, he took possession legally in accordance with the terms of the repair contract.
April 25, 2019
Joe Biden announced that he was running for president.
December 9, 2019
The FBI issued a subpoena for the Hunter Biden laptop after Mac Isaac informed them of its existence, who was “worried” about what he saw on his hard drive. “I just don’t know … what do they allow me to say,” Isaac explained months later. “I know I’ve seen, I’ve seen things. And I was worried. I was worried that someone might come looking for these things in the end and want them out of my store. ”Along with business emails, the device contained numerous explicit photos and videos of themselves from Hunter Biden having sex and doing what it be a drug.