House Oversight Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin dismissed new allegations about the Biden family’s overseas business dealings made by House Republicans on Wednesday, claiming committee chairman James Comer “failed to provide factual evidence to support his wild accusations about the President.”
Comer and committee Republicans said Wednesday that the Biden family and its business associates created a complicated web of more than 20 companies with the intent to conceal money received from foreign nationals.
Sixteen of the companies were limited liability companies formed during Joe Biden’s tenure as vice president, the committee said in a press conference on Wednesday. The Biden family, their business associates, and their companies received more than $10 million from foreign nationals’ and their related companies, bank records obtained by the committee show. These payments occurred both while Biden was in office as vice president and after his time in office ended.
In what Representative Nancy Mace called an act of “financial gymnastics,” many payments were routed from foreign companies to the Biden family’s business associates’ companies which then doled out payments to the Bidens in incremental payments to different bank accounts in an alleged attempt to hide the source of the funds.
Raskin on Wednesday dismissed the new allegations, saying Comer “continues to bombard the public with innuendo, misrepresentations, and outright lies, recycling baseless claims from stories that were debunked years ago.”
“Unable to implicate the President directly, Committee Republicans have resorted to using cherry-picked bank records, misrepresentations about confidential and unverified bank reports known as SARs, and baseless conspiracy theories to attack the President’s family, including his grandchildren,” he added.
Comer said at least nine Biden family members received payments: Hunter Biden; James Biden; James Biden’s wife, Sara Jones Biden; the late Beau Biden’s wife, Hallie Biden; Hunter Biden’s ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle; Hunter Biden’s wife, Melissa Cohen; and “three children of the president’s son and the president’s brother.”
Much of the money came from Chinese nationals and companies with ties to the Chinese Communist Party, Comer said. Multiple Biden family members received money after it passed through an associate’s account. Comer said of the countries the Biden family was influence peddling in, China is “the most reputable.”
The committee revealed Wednesday that records suggest the Biden family and its associates’ business dealings in Romania “bear clear indication of a scheme to peddle influence” from 2015 to 2017.
Bank records released by the committee on Wednesday showed $3 million was allegedly sent from Romanian national Gabriel Popoviciu’s Bladon Enterprises to Robinson Walker LLC, which is controlled by Hunter Biden’s business partner Rob Walker. Roughly one-third of the money was then sent to bank accounts belonging to Hunter Biden, Hallie Biden and an unnamed Biden family member.
Sixteen of the seventeen payments involved in the deal occurred while Biden was still in office. The money “stops flowing from the Romanian national soon after Joe Biden leaves the vice presidency,” Comer said.
A press release from committee Democrats on Wednesday accused Comer of trying to “pass off Hunter Biden’s legal work on behalf [sic] Gabriel Popoviciu as new evidence.”
“However, Hunter Biden’s legal work on behalf of Popoviciu while he was counsel at the law firm Boies Schiller has long been known, and there is no evidence that President Biden took any official actions influenced in any way by Hunter Biden’s representation,” the release reads. “Chairman Comer has also ignored the fact that months after being hired as President Trump’s personal attorney while also representing Popoviciu, Rudy Giuliani publicly called on Romanian authorities to stand down on anti-corruption efforts.”
The release also argues that bank records reviewed by Democrats on the committee “do not indicate any wrongdoing by President Biden nor do they show any connection to policy decisions.” It also accuses Republicans of failing to note that Biden family members “have no ownership interest in multiple of the business entities referred to in their memorandum.”
Comer said Wednesday that the Bidens received “millions of dollars from China,” with Comer saying it is “inconceivable that the president did not know” about the payments.
In March, the committee previously revealed that Hunter Biden, James Biden, Hallie Biden and an unknown fourth Biden received a total of $1.3 million in payments from accounts related to Biden family business associate Rob Walker in 2017, shortly after Walker received a $3 million wire from a Chinese energy company.
The subpoenaed bank records show that State Energy HK Limited, a firm affiliated with CEFC China Energy, wired $3 million to Robinson Walker, LLC on March 1, 2017 — less than two months after then-vice president Joe Biden left office. The following day, Robinson Walker, LLC wired $1,065,000 to European Energy and Infrastructure Group in Abu Dhabi, a company associated with James Gilliar, another business partner to Hunter Biden.
The Biden family members and their companies then began “receiving incremental payments over a period of approximately three months,” the committee’s memo from March states. “The recipients of the money included Hallie Biden, companies associated with Hunter Biden and James Biden, and an unknown bank account identified as ‘Biden.’”
The unknown “Biden” account received $70,000 from Robinson Walker, LLC between March and May of 2017, according to subpoenaed bank records obtained by the committee.
Robinson Walker LLC sent Hallie Biden $25,000 on March 20, 2017, according to the memo. One month earlier, she received a $10,000 transfer from Robinson Walker LLC shortly before it received the $3 million payment.
Meanwhile, an account belonging to Hunter Biden received $500,000 during that time frame, while an account belonging to James Biden received $360,000.
The memo also revealed that Walker’s account sent money to Biden family members in 2015 while Joe Biden was still in office.
“On November 5, 2015, Robinson Walker, LLC received a wire from a company (the Committee continues to investigate the identity of the account holder for this company) that had an overseas bank account in the amount of $179,836.86,” the memo adds. That amount appears to have been split between Walker, Gilliar and the Biden family. Hunter Biden’s account received $59,000 on November 2015.
Committee Democrats accuse Republicans of mischaracterizing suspicious activity reports (SARs) as “bank violations,” arguing they are instead “unverified tips and not evidence of misconduct.”
“Notwithstanding this fact, Committee Republicans have not identified a single SAR concerning any transaction involving President Biden,” the release reads, adding that SARs Republicans have used to make “false accusations were filed by financial institutions because of erroneous or unfounded claims.”
Committee Democrats ultimately accused Committee Republicans of not being serious about investigating the potential influence of foreign money in American politics because they have “refused to investigate the billions of dollars former President Trump and former White House adviser Jared Kushner received directly from foreign governments.”
“If they’re in search of presidential corruption by foreign powers, the undisputed champion is their own guy,” Raskin said.
Representative Gerry Connolly (D., Va.) offered a similar comment about former president Trump.
“For months, House Republicans have trafficked in lies and innuendo in a sorry attempt to smear President Biden and hurt Democrats politically. Unfortunately for them, this tired playbook hasn’t stuck, and it’s no secret why,” Connolly said in a statement to National Review.
“Donald Trump, the former President of the United States and the current leader of the Republican Party, oversaw a vast criminal enterprise that landed the CFO of the Trump Organization behind bars. He brought that criminal mindset with him to the White House, acting with such callous disregard for laws and norms that he became the only President to be impeached twice. He has been indicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records and, just yesterday, a jury found him liable of sexual abuse and defamation.”
He accused Republicans of “concocting one conspiracy theory after another to deflect and distract from Donald Trump’s extensive criminal record.”
Other Democrats on the House Oversight Committee did not immediately respond to requests for comment.