The story has only gotten more damning with the additional evidence unearthed by the Oversight Committee.
The story has only gotten more damning with the additional evidence unearthed by the Oversight Committee.
W ould the American people have elected Joe Biden, despite the widespread disdain for then-president Donald Trump, if it had been widely understood that Biden was bought and paid for by the Chinese Communist regime?
The question presses because, as it turns out, the incumbent president actually is what the media-Democrat complex falsely claimed the prior president was: a clandestine agent of a hostile foreign power — indeed, America’s greatest geopolitical foe by whom, it is convincingly argued, we are already confronted in a second Cold War.
Scandalous as this story is, it is just as infuriating. Joe Biden’s collusion with China is back in the news because the House Oversight Committee has just released its latest report showing “the big guy” actually did get at least one 10 percent payout from the Biden/China scheme, precisely matching his stake in the venture as it was sketched out in a notorious May 2017 email. But this is “news” only because the paper trail is now, inevitably, catching up with the outlines of the story.
Thanks to the extensive excavation of Biden financial records by Senators Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R., Wis.), followed by the dogged reporting of the New York Post once Hunter’s abandoned laptop was exposed, the outlines of the story were publicly available before Election Day 2020. The Biden/China scheme may not have been sufficiently known, but it was eminently knowable — so much so that I presented it in detail in “A Collusion Tale: China and the Bidens,” which we published on October 31, 2020 — the weekend before the election.
The story has gotten more damning with the additional evidence unearthed by the Oversight Committee under the direction of Chairman James Comer (R., Ky.). But it hasn’t changed.
CEFC, the Shanghai-based energy conglomerate with which Joe Biden and his family joined forces, was China. To describe it as a “thinly veiled” arm of Xi Jinping’s monstrous regime would exaggerate the camouflage. It was run by Ye Jianming, whom the Bidens deemed a protégé of Xi — as the president’s brother, Jim Biden, conceded to federal investigators.
How could it be otherwise? As I recounted in October 2020, CEFC’s position as a privileged “private” company was established by the regime in 2006 (when Xi was the rising star of the CCP). CEFC was backed by a 30-billion-yuan line of credit by the regime-controlled China Development Bank (not coincidentally, a partner in a second Biden venture with Xi’s regime). Prior to the founding of CEFC, Ye had led the International Liaison Division of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). As is customary with big “private” firms in China, regime officials were threaded throughout CEFC’s ranks. The firm conducted joint activities with the PLA’s General Political Department — even funding a training center for applied psychological operations and propaganda against Taiwan.
Ye occasionally traveled with Xi and served as his emissary in foreign commercial dealings, particularly in Eastern Europe. Two other top CEFC executives — both of whom became Biden business partners — were tightly tied to Xi’s regime: Zhang Jianjun and Patrick Ho (Ho Chi-ping). Zhang was CEFC’s executive director and traveled with Xi to Moscow in 2017 for meetings with Vladimir Putin over CEFC’s prospective acquisition of a 14 percent stake in Rosneft, the Russian energy giant — a deal that fell through when CEFC suddenly succumbed amid a spying scandal in 2018. As we shall see, Ho — memorably dubbed the “f***ing spy chief of China” by Hunter Biden — was the central player in that scandal; he had been the regime’s home-affairs secretary for Hong Kong.
As I elaborated back in 2020, CEFC’s raison d’être was promotion of Xi’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative (OBOR), the “debt-trap diplomacy” (in Michael Auslin’s apt description) by which Beijing entices foreign governments with billions in infrastructure aid and thus manipulates them to do its bidding. Ye was unabashed in discussing CEFC’s mission “to serve the state’s strategy.”
The Chinese regime is infamously extortionate and ruthless in pursuing its interests. The CEFC vehicle served the state’s strategy because many governments and corporations that were wary of transacting energy and precious-metals business directly with the CCP-controlled government proved more than willing — for the right price — to indulge the fiction that CEFC was a private business with which it could deal. This, of course, is why the Biden connection was so valuable — why CEFC was willing to pay millions of dollars for it. Doors were opened by the association with Joe Biden, one of America’s most prominent, influential politicians. If CEFC could brandish cordial relations and a business partnership with the Biden family, then other targets of China’s OBOR blandishments would be more willing to transact.
All of this was knowable (and to some of us, known) three years ago, prior to the election. So was the fact that the Biden/CEFC scheme was not an abstract plan; it was a dirty done deal in which the regime-backed company lavished the Bidens with mountains of money. It was also knowable (and to some of us, known) that CEFC was a Chinese-government intelligence operation whose agents had reeled the Bidens in — to the point that Hunter Biden was paid a million dollars to try to find out what the U.S. government had on Patrick Ho.
It’s not yet known what Hunter found out. It is known that the government had a boatload of evidence against Ho and CEFC — in large part because, concurrent with CEFC’s big payouts to the Bidens, CEFC was under foreign-intelligence surveillance by the FBI. FISA surveillance, triggered by a judicial finding of probable cause that the target is a clandestine agent of a foreign power, is classified. Ergo, it has not been publicly disclosed whether the FBI’s national-security monitoring of CEFC ended up tracking communications of Hunter Biden, Jim Biden, or other Biden business partners who dealt directly with CEFC.
This scandal was right there for all to see in October 2020. Not just the prosecution of Patrick Ho, not just the fact that after his arrest, his first call was to Jim Biden, but also the fact that right after the government’s FISA surveillance was disclosed in court, Xi’s regime disappeared Ye and allowed CEFC to go bust.
It was all there for anyone to see. But Americans didn’t see it, and many who saw it didn’t believe it, because the 2020 Biden campaign and congressional Democrats — aided and abetted by allies in media, the tech giants, law enforcement, and the “community” of current and former intelligence agents — insidiously portrayed evidence of the Biden family influence-peddling business as “Russian disinformation.”
It was a patently empty claim. It was obvious that the evidence was authentic. The proof amassed by Senators Grassley and Johnson was in the form of financial records, often triggered by suspicious-activity reports from banks. Not only was the Hunter Biden laptop evidence authentic on its face; a principal on the Biden side of the CEFC scheme, Tony Bobulinski, attested to the authenticity of the laptop data pertaining to the scheme — and he had a cache of texts and other documents to back up his account.
The story was buried by the press in the run-up to the election, and then by the Justice Department once Biden was safely ensconced in the White House. David Weiss, the so-called special counsel, never investigated it. Whistleblower agents have come forward with revelations that they were instructed not to pursue leads or even ask questions that might implicate Joe Biden. Bobulinski has related that, after being interviewed by the FBI when he went public in October 2020, he was ignored by the Biden Justice Department and never called to testify before the grand jury. Weiss’s studious inaction while the statute of limitations lapsed has sabotaged the case — as you read the latest accounts of information the House committee has turned up, bear in mind that it has been more than five years (the legal limit for bringing charges) since CEFC last paid the Bidens.
What are the committee’s new revelations?
They are significant, even given how much eye-popping information was already public. For starters, the Bidens’ dealings with CEFC were already under way in 2015, when Joe Biden was vice president. The committee relates that Jim and Hunter Biden did not take CEFC money during the Obama years because the optics would have been awful. But they were miffed that CEFC was already using the Biden connection to further its — China’s — objectives. They believed CEFC owed them, and they expected to be paid.
That was in the works: James Gilliar, a former British military official with intelligence connections, messaged Bobulinski on Christmas Eve 2015 to explain that he needed help working a “deal between one of the most prominent families from US” and China. Another key Biden partner in the venture, Rob Walker, told investigators (in one of the few interviews they were permitted to do) that Hunter arranged for Vice President Biden to show up at a lunch meeting — at the Four Seasons in Washington — just to say hello and bolster the prospects for a deal that, of course, was based on his political clout.
It has long been known that, in February 2017 (i.e., right after Joe Biden left office) Hunter met with Ye in Miami, where he was presented with a pricey diamond and a couple of potential business propositions. In one, CEFC would pay the Bidens just for “introductions” — a three-year contract for $10 million annually. In the other, there would be a joint venture focused on infrastructure — the Bidens helping China score the energy resources it craves, including in the United States.
There was more than planning, though. There was also payback for the degree to which CEFC had already exploited the Biden relationship. On March 1, 2017, a CEFC-tied business wired $3 million to Walker — who later told investigators this exorbitant payment represented a “thank you” from CEFC. In the pattern the committee has seen repeatedly, the windfall was divvied up three ways: Walker kept a third, a third went to Gilliar, and a third — $1,065,000 — went to the Bidens. As the committee illustrates with a chart in its memo, the Bidens’ cut was dribbled out in smaller portions over a roughly two-month period (March 6 through May 18), with payments going to Hunter Biden, Jim Biden, Hallie Biden (Hunter’s then-paramour and the widow of his brother Beau), and an additional Biden family member who has not yet been identified.
Meantime, the Biden side of the venture went to work on its substance and structure. Jim Biden conducted meetings with Louisiana officials toward the goal of constructing a massive liquified-natural-gas facility. On May 2, Hunter invited Bobulinski to meet his father in Beverly Hills, where Joe Biden was speaking at a Milken Institute conference. At the meeting (which is confirmed by text messages) Joe discussed the CEFC venture with Hunter, Jim, Bobulinski, and others. With Trump in office, Joe Biden’s coming 2020 presidential bid was already a front-of-mind concern, so Bobulinski later asked Jim Biden whether there weren’t concerns about his brother’s participation in financial transactions with Chinese government-affiliated entities. Jim replied that they were careful to maintain “plausible deniability” about Joe’s involvement. It was obviously a worry: Gilliar later messaged Bobulinski, “Don’t mention Joe being involved, it’s only when u are face to face, I know u know that but they are paranoid.”
On May 13, 2017, Gilliar sent Hunter the now famous email that sketched out the structure and splits in the CEFC scheme — including “10 percent for the big guy.” The Biden side believed the deal had momentum. Hunter Biden’s discussions with Ye indicated that, at least for starters, there would be a quick $10 million infusion of capital. Interesting, then, that when Joe Biden bought his Rehoboth Beach manse less than a month later, he paid $2.74 million in cash rather than taking a mortgage. (The dedicated career public servant said he and his wife were using proceeds from a book deal for the purchase.)
There was a problem, though. As the calendar flipped from May to June, and then to July, the CEFC funds did not materialize. By late July, desperation set in on the Biden side. Thus it was that on July 30, Hunter sent the infamous WhatsApp threat message to CEFC executive Raymond Zhao (whom he calls “Z”):
I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight. And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang [i.e., the aforementioned CEFC executive director Zhang Jianjun], or the chairman [i.e., Ye Jianming], I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every single person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.
Joe Biden has publicly denied that he was sitting with Hunter at the time (yes, the same Joe Biden who has vehemently denied that he ever discussed business with Hunter — and whose half-century career is littered with similarly foolish lies). It hardly matters. After all, there would have been no influence-peddling business absent the guy with the influence. Still, there is every reason to suspect that Joe was there. For one thing, Hunter was photographed that day just outside the Bidens’ family home in Wilmington (steering dad’s prize Corvette). Moreover, at this critical moment in the business relationship, Hunter’s Chinese partners might well have asked to speak directly to Joe Biden — just as Hunter’s corrupt Ukrainian partners had done in connection with their Burisma travails. We now know Joe Biden frequently delivered when his personal touch was needed, and that Hunter would have been humiliated if he’d been caught bluffing. He probably wasn’t bluffing.
In any event, Hunter further admonished Zhao, “I am very concerned that [Ye] 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.” He warned Zhao not to “mistake kindness for weakness” and demanded a prompt reply.
The following day (July 31), Zhao assured Hunter that Zhang had said “CEFC is willing to cooperate with the family” and wanted Hunter to meet with Dong Gongwen (who is called “Kevin”) to resolve any issues. Hunter has referred to Dong as his “partner” and Ye’s “emissary.”
By August 2, Hunter was engaged in detailed messages with Dong, rehashing the two original CEFC offers — the three-year deal at $10 million per annum for “consulting fees based on introductions alone,” and the “MUCH MORE LASTING AND LUCRATIVE ARRANGEMENT to create a holding company 50% owned by ME and 50% owned by him [i.e., Ye].” Dong assured Hunter that things would work out, adding that Zhang had extended “his best regards to you, Jim, and VP,” and that “the fund will be wired to the jointly administered account in a timely manner” — “jointly” in that the account for the entity, to be known as Hudson West III, would be overseen by Hunter and Dong. Hunter expressed his “great relief” at this “welcome news,” adding that “my family sends their best wishes and looks forward to playing some golf when the director [Zhang] has time.”
Hunter and Dong completed the paperwork for Hudson West III on August 2, with Hunter opening a bank account for it the following day. But there was one more snag — it appeared that CEFC now wanted to capitalize the venture with just $5 million, not the $10 million originally envisioned. Hunter messaged Dong on August 3 to say this surprise “is not acceptable obviously.” Hunter counter-proposed an initial $5 million transfer from CEFC with an additional $5 million “next year if the Chairman [Ye] and CEFC review is favorable.” But he added:
If the Chairman [Ye] doesn’t value this relationship is being worth at least 5M [sic] then I’m just baffled. . . . Please let’s put this to bed tonight sign officially tomorrow (or anytime as late tonight as you want) and get to work. I am tired of this Kevin [Dong]. I can make $5M in salary at any law firm in America. If you think this is about money it’s not. The Bidens are the best I know at doing exactly what the Chairman wants from this partnership. Please let’s not quibble over peanuts.
The quibbling was over. On August 4, CEFC sent a smooth-things-over ante to Hunter — $100,000 wired directly to his corporate account. Then on August 8, the mother lode: a $5 million payment wired from a CEFC subsidiary to the Hudson West III account.
Obviously, the Bidens had succeeded both in getting CEFC to pay up and in cutting out their erstwhile partners — Bobulinski, Gilliar, and Walker. On the upside, that meant more of the spoils for the family; but there was a downside: They clearly missed Walker’s expertise in breaking big-dollar transfers of foreign money into smaller, less noticeable payments to sundry Biden family members.
Thus the transaction that has grabbed everyone’s attention this week.
Hunter pulled a $400,000 slice of the $5 million pie. Of this, he used $130,000 to inject cash into his personal accounts and to buy a Porsche. He also, on August 14, wired $150,000 to his uncle, Jim Biden — specifically, to the “Lion Hall Group” account, which sounds like it belongs to a business but is actually a personal account belonging to Jim and his wife, Sara Biden.
Two weeks later, on August 28, Sara Biden transferred $50,000 from the Lion Hall account into Sara and Jim’s joint checking account. Finally, on September 3, Sara wrote a check in the amount of $40,000 — 10 percent of the original $400,000 — to Joe Biden. In the memo line, she wrote “loan repayment.”
Funny, that. So far, no evidence of a loan has been forthcoming. Furthermore, the committee has pointed in recent days to a second transaction, involving Americore Health, “a financially distressed and failing rural hospital operator.” In bankruptcy proceedings, the company alleges that Jim Biden assured Americore that “his last name, ‘Biden,’ could ‘open doors’ and that he could obtain a large investment from the Middle East based on his political connections.” As a result, Americore paid him over $600,000, mainly in two installments. In the latter of these, on March 1, Americore wired $200,000 to Jim’s personal account. The same day, Sara Biden made out a check to Joe Biden in the undoubtedly purely coincidental amount of $200,000.
In the memo line, she wrote “loan repayment.”
Maybe Joe, the career public servant, really was lending hundreds of thousands of dollars to his hotshot business consultant brother (who seems to have been getting some nice paydays for someone in need of such sizeable loans). I suppose we’ll find out as Comer’s committee keeps digging.
For now, we can draw the curtain on the CEFC saga by recapping the other $1 million the Xi-regime-tied conglomerate paid Hunter.
A few weeks after making the $5 million investment in the Bidens, “Chairman” Ye told Hunter Biden he feared CEFC executive Patrick Ho was under investigation by the Justice Department. Ye asked Hunter — who went to law school but does not practice much law, much less criminal law — to see if he could find out what was going on. In September, a $1 million retainer agreement was executed.
Turns out there was quite a lot going on. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan were building a case that Ho had offered millions in bribes to top officials in Chad and Uganda, in hopes of securing CEFC access to energy reserves. Not just that. Ho was acting as an arms dealer — Chad wanted China’s help putting down Boko Haram, the local al-Qaeda affiliate. There were also negotiations to sell weapons to Qatar and Libya. And in his spare time, Ho was trying to help Iran evade international sanctions on its nuclear program — trying to arrange for CEFC to serve as middleman for Tehran to buy precious metals by leveraging funds frozen in a Chinese bank.
It is not publicly known whether Hunter was able to ferret out any useful information for his CEFC partners. It is known that, when he was arrested on November 21, Ho’s first call was to Jim Biden — who, consistent with his effort to distance himself from the CEFC debacle, has publicly claimed that Ho really meant to call Hunter and reached him by mistake.
It was in connection with Ho’s prosecution that the government on February 8, 2018, revealed the FISA surveillance of CEFC. Days later, Ye was detained in China on Xi’s orders. The principal Chinese partner of the U.S. president’s family, who paid the Bidens millions, has never been seen publicly again — and the media yawn.
Hunter, of course, got paid. A bookkeeping snafu delayed the transfer of $1 million until March 2018. It was around that time that an agitated Hunter recorded himself saying:
I have another New York Times reporter calling about my representation of Patrick Ho — the f***ing spy chief of China who started the company that my partner, who is worth $323 billion, founded and is now missing. The richest man in the world is missing who was my partner. He was missing since I last saw him in his $58 million apartment inside a $4 billion deal to build the f***ing largest f***ing LNG [i.e., liquified-natural-gas] port in the world.
After Ho’s March 2019 conviction on foreign-corruption charges, he was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment. If there had really been a Justice Department investigation of the Biden family business and its intimate connections to the criminal, communist regime–tied CEFC enterprise, one might have thought Patrick Ho would be at the top of David Weiss’s witness list. Apparently not: Ho was whisked away to Hong Kong, now under China’s firm control, as soon as his prison term expired.
In the United States, we spent three years in a frenzy over a false allegation that the then-sitting president was bought and paid for by a hostile foreign power. And now we have spent three years in a slumber despite mounting evidence that the currently sitting president was bought and paid for by a hostile foreign power.