House Republicans have evidence that US President Joe Biden personally benefited from his son Hunter selling China access to the family, Congressman James Comer announced on Wednesday.
“Not only did he lie about his son Hunter making money in China, but it also turns out that $40,000 in laundered China money landed in Joe Biden’s bank account in the form of a personal check. And the Oversight Committee has it,” Comer, a Kentucky Republican, said in a video message.
The 12-page memo put together by the Republican committee staff purports to show the money trail of a personal check written by James and Sarah Biden, the current president’s brother and his wife, on September 3, 2017.
The check itself says it’s a “loan repayment,” but the money originally came from the Chinese energy giant CEFC and was channeled through the president’s son Hunter, according to the memo.
Biden’s son Hunter and his brother James began working with CEFC in 2016, while Joe Biden was still Barack Obama’s vice president. The company committed to investing $10 million in a joint venture with the Bidens, which a note found on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop said would include a ten percent stake for “the big guy,” widely understood to mean his father.
On July 30, 2017, Hunter sent CEFC associate Raymond Zhao a WhatsApp message, demanding to know where the money was:
“I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. I am very concerned that the Chairman has either changed his mind and broken our deal without telling me or that he is unaware of the promises and assurances that have been made have not been kept. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand. And now means tonight.”
A response from Zhao, dated July 31, said that CEFC was “willing to cooperate with the family.”
According to Comer, this was proof “the extortion scheme worked.”
Northern International Capital, a CEFC front, sent a $5 million wire to Hudson West III – a front company Hunter had set up with CEFC’s Gongwen Dong – on August 8, 2017. Bank records show that Hunter withdrew $400,000 from Hudson West III to another company he owned, Owasco PC, the very same day.
On August 14, Hunter wired $150,000 from his Hudson West III account to the company owned by James and Sara Biden, called the Lion Hall Group. Prior to that transaction, the account held less than $2,000. Two weeks later, $50,000 was transferred from the Lion Hall account to the personal checking account of James and Sara Biden, which had held less than $47. On September 3, they cut a “loan repayment” personal check to Joe Biden for $40,000 – exactly 10% of the amount Hunter had withdrawn from the CEFC wire the month before.
“Joe benefited from his family cashing in on his name – with money from China no less,” Congressman Comer said on Wednesday. “Without his family peddling his name and his son threatening a CEFC associate with consequences that he said Joe Biden knew about, James wouldn’t have had the money to write the $40,000 check to his brother Joe.”
The problem isn’t just that Biden lied to the American public about Hunter’s business deals or his involvement in them, but that he took money sourced to a company with ties to the Communist Party of China that “wanted to advance China’s interests,” thereby exposing the Bidens to blackmail and putting “America’s interests behind his own desire for money,” Comer argued.
The contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop were made public in October 2020, just ahead of the US presidential election. Joe Biden and the Democrats declared it a “Russian disinformation operation” and the outlet that published the story was censored on social media.