Quick & Dirty Primer: Joe and Hunter Biden
A 10-min cheat sheet on what the dynamic duo are up to.
If you’re like me you probably ignore the news as much as possible and get the gist of current events from snarky tweets, Instagram memes, and water cooler talk with your normie coworkers. Personally, I believe politics peaked in 44 BC and it has been all downhill from there. But the random tidbits of the Biden family’s corruption seemed mildly interesting (I had no idea he was president) so I decided to do some digging. After reading dozens of articles, listening to hours of podcasts, and reading a plethora of reports, I have decided to autistically lay out a 10-minute read primer on the facts around the Joe and Hunter Biden saga. It’s simplest to arrange the schemes in geographical order so strap-in it’s a bumpy journey:
China:
CEFC China Energy is a massive state-backed oil and gas company with ties to both the CCP and PLA. A shell company owned by Biden family associate Rob Walker received $3m from CEFC China Energy in 2017
Rob Walker is a family friend, former Clinton administration official. His wife was an assistant to Jill Biden.
A portion of the CEFC funds were paid to Joe’s daughter-in-law Hallie Biden (the widow of Beau Biden) while she was dating her brother-in-law Hunter and was ostensibly employed as a school counselor.
Congressman James Comer claims that numerous Biden family members and their companies received over $1.3m in payments fromm Rob Walker in connection with the above Chinese wire.
Separately, starting in 2017, CEFC paid $4.8m to Hunter Biden, in the form of a legal retainer and consulting fees.
The legal retainer was for representation of Patrick Ho, a CEFC official who is currently serving time in prison for bribery schemes.
The fees were linked to proposed business transactions that never came to fruition.
The deal also included a $65k a month retainer for Joe Biden’s brother James.
Ye Jianming, founder/chairman of CEFC gifted Hunter a 2.8-carat diamond worth $80k.
James Biden’s consulting firm, Lion Hall, would receive $1.4m of the $4.8m above.
Hunter attempted to open a joint office space with CEFC emissaries, and specifically requested a set of keys be made for Joe and Jill Biden.
At the time Hunter was in “the throes of addiction” according to his memoir and in dire financial straits – according to divorce court documents, he was hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.
Emails found on Hunter’s laptop indicate that “The Big Guy” was to get 10% of CEFC deal proceeds. Whistleblower and Hunter’s ex-business partner, Tony Bobulinski, has later come forward and identified “The Big Guy” as Joe Biden.
In other text message correspondence, Hunter seems to have alluded to the fact that Joe Biden receives 50% of the income that Hunter receives off these schemes.
Emails uncovered between large Democratic party donors remark that Hunter would boast about his access to highest levels in the People’s Republic of China and his willingness to help business associates there.
Hunter accompanied Joe (then Vice President) on a trip to China in 2013. Devon Archer testified before congress that Joe attended Hunter’s business meetings during the trip.
12 days after the China visit, Hunter co-founded PE firm Bonai Harvest RST (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund Management Co. (BHR Partners for short).
BHR partners is 80% controlled and funded by Chinese government owned shareholders like the Bank of China.
These backers have helped fund BHR with over $2bn in assets.
Hunter still owns a 10% stake in the fund, making him on paper lucratively rich.
Hunter introduced BHR CEO, Jonathan Lin, to Joe Biden and Joe Biden later wrote college recommendation letters for Lin’s Children.
BHR has had privileged access to some of China’s largest private investments including the nuclear, real estate and rail space.
Ukraine:
Hunter Biden (with no expertise in the oil and gas business) joined the board of Burisma, Ukraine’s largest energy company. And became the highest paid member of the company netting $1m a year – and remained on the board for 5 years.
At the time the owner of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky, was under investigation of wrongdoing by Ukrainian Inspector General, Viktor Shokin.
Burisma hired Hunter around this time, and directly sought help from the Obama administration to get investigations called off.
According to the WSJ, Devon Archer testified to the House that Hunter put Joe on speakerphone more than 20 times during business meetings with Burisma to “sell the brand.” And that Hunter and Joe were in nearly daily communication.
Though Archer denies that they ever talked business on these 20 calls during business meetings.
According to Congressman James Comer, Archer testified that Burisma would have gone out of business if “the Biden brand” had not been attached to it. People were intimidated against messing with Burisma legally. And Archer further testified that Burisma execs put heavy pressure on Hunter to leverage his connections to handle an investigation into the company.
At this time, the Obama administration began targeting inspector general Viktor Shokin, ostensibly for his inability to tackle corruption in the country.
Joe Biden personally went to the Ukraine and threatened to withhold $1bn in US aid (loan guarantees) unless the inspector, Shokin, was fired. Joe Biden later bragged about this at a Council on Foreign Relations dinner.
Shokin gets fired, Ukraine gets the US aid, and 10 months after the new inspector takes over the investigation into Burisma is closed.
Libya:
Business Insider received verified emails displaying how Hunter was eagerly selling access to his father’s political pull.
The emails, between two Democratic party donors and Middle East businessmen were hoping to hire Hunter to recover billions of dollars in Libyan assets frozen by the Obama administration.
Hunter requested an annual retainer of $2m dollars and a finder’s fee for his services.
The donors noted his connections to the State Department, Treasury, John Kerry, and China as upsides to doing business with him.
However, they ultimately decided not to hire him as he was a “alcoholic, drug addict” with a propensity for “chasing low class hookers” and came with “many more headaches.”
Russia, Kazakhstan, & Romania:
Hunter has associations with two Russian Billionaires: Yelena Baturina and Vladimir Yevtushenkov. Hunter has partnered with both to buy property in the US.
Baturina, widow of former Moscow mayor, Yury Luzhkov, wired $3.5m in 2014 to a Hunter Biden associated firm. She also met with Hunter and Joe Biden in 2015 in DC along with Kazakhstani Prime Minister Karim Massimov and a Ukrainian Burisma executive.
Yevtushenkov, who has owned Russian weapons technology companies, met Hunter in 2012. The NYP reports through a source that he and Hunter purchased three properties together in their joint ventures.
Both individuals have managed to avoid sanctions in the US as the Ruso-Ukrainian war has waged on despite being sanctioned by multiple other countries.
In 2015 Hunter began working for Romanian businessman Gabriel Popoviciu. Popoviciu would pay Hunter $3m over the next year indirectly through Rob Walker.
Though the end goals of these dealings aren’t clear, Popoviciu would be convicted of bribery for other dealings in 2016.
USA! USA! USA!:
Stateside, Hunter has been prosecuted for tax evasion and gun charges.
The tax evasion cites he owes over $100k from underreporting of earnings and misrepresenting of expenses including Hunter claiming prostitutes were business expenses and a sex club membership was a business-related golf membership.
The gun violation stems from his purchasing a handgun and attesting “no” to drug use while being addicted to crack cocaine.
IRS whistleblowers have since come forward and claim that during their investigation into Hunter, the FBI withheld a FD 10-23 form, in which a Ukrainian confidential informant claims he has recordings and further evidence that Hunter and Joe each accepted $5m bribes from Burisma executives.
Though Dems correctly point out that these claims are so far unverified.
IRS whistleblowers further claim that in December 2020, during their investigation of Hunter, the Joe Biden transition team and Secret Service were tipped off ahead of an attempted interview of Hunter, and because of this an interview never took place.
The plea deal would only have him charged with misdemeanors and avoiding jail time. Further it included a “diversion agreement” that would shield Hunter him from any further prosecution.
The judge was not made privy to the diversion agreement until just before Hunter’s plea hearing began, as the paragraph containing the language had not been presented to her.
Once presented, she has openly questioned its constitutionality. And the prosecution admitted, when questioned by the judge, that such a clause was unprecedented.
The agreement for the plea deal fell apart because the judge pushed the prosecution to state explicitly that Hunter would not have protection from prosecution for the Foreign Agents Registration Act. His defense, shocked by this apparent change of terms from the prosecution, rebuked the deal.
The Republican-led House Subcommittee investigating the Bidens issued an amicus brief to the court, outlining the further information that has come to light in their investigation. A lawyer on Hunter’s defense team called up the court and impersonated a lawyer from congress to have the amicus brief removed.
That’s the quick and dirty on that – pretty impressive what Sleepy Joe managed to get up to in his old age. Anyway, modern politics is all fake and exhausting, but I’ve written about that elsewhere.
Thanks for reading and until next time,
Zay