Biden aides won't comment on first family FARA exposure

VILNIUS, Lithuania — The White House refused to comment Tuesday on the potential legal exposure for President Biden, first son Hunter and first brother James Biden after a US citizen was criminally charged for working as an unregistered agent of the same Chinese firm that paid the Biden family.

“What’s the White House’s take on potential [Foreign Agents Registration Act] liability for the first family and the president?” The Post asked White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan at a NATO summit in Lithuania.

“I’ve not seen that and cannot comment on it,” Sullivan deflected during a briefing.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who took reporter questions after Sullivan, did not provide additional comment or immediately respond to an emailed inquiry.

Gal Luft was charged Monday by the Manhattan US Attorney’s Office for allegedly violating FARA by accepting from CEFC China Energy at least $700,000 to his Maryland-based think tank, the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, in exchange for co-hosting conferences and attempting to influence a 2016 Donald Trump campaign adviser.

CEFC is a since-defunct cog in Beijing’s “Belt and Road” foreign influence campaign and provided the Biden family one of its most lucrative foreign income streams.

Luft claims he provided the FBI with information in 2019 about the Biden family’s role in the operation.

Luft worked “to recruit and ‘educate'” a 2016 Trump campaign adviser, who was not identified by name, “so that [the adviser] would make public statements, at the request of LUFT and [CEFC leader Patrick Ho], which were in the interest of China,” according to the indictment, which charges Luft with additional crimes related to his work in other countries.

CEFC appears to have paid far more to the Biden family than to Luft — and both congressional Republicans and legal experts say the first son almost certainly violated FARA by failing to register as an agent of CEFC and other foreign employers.

Hunter Biden did not face any FARA charges in a probation-only plea deal announced last month for tax and gun crimes.

The deal must still be approved by a judge.

Delaware US Attorney David Weiss has said his investigation is ongoing, leaving open the possibility of additional charges.

The Chinese government-linked CEFC sent roughly $5 million to accounts associated with Hunter Biden within 10 days of a threatening July 30, 2017, text message to a Chinese businessman in which the first son invoked his dad and threatened payback if an agreement was not fulfilled.

An Aug. 2, 2017, email retrieved from Hunter’s abandoned laptop said that CEFC chairman Ye Jianming offered a three-year consulting contract with CEFC that was to pay $10 million annually “for introductions alone.”

Former Hunter Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski says he personally met with Joe Biden in 2017 about the CEFC venture, and a May 2017 email from another Hunter Biden partner, James Gilliar, penciled in a 10% cut of proceeds for the “big guy,” whom both Bobulinski and Gilliar have identified as Joe Biden.

An October 2017 email from Hunter Biden’s laptop identifies Joe Biden as a participant in a call about CEFC’s attempt to purchase US natural gas.

CEFC reportedly sent $100,000 to Hunter’s law firm Owasco on Aug. 4, 2017, less than a week after the threatening text message.

CEFC also wired $5 million to the firm Hudson West III on Aug. 8, 2017, according to a 2020 report by two Republican-led Senate committees.

That entity in turn paid nearly $4.8 million in “consulting fees” to Owasco over the following 13 months, the report said.

A Washington Post review of Hunter Biden’s laptop documents last year found that James and Hunter Biden received at least $4.8 million from CEFC in 2017 and 2018.

The Biden family’s CEFC relationship appears to have started around 2015 — the same year as Luft’s — when Hunter connected with Vuk Jeremic, a former foreign minister of Serbia and president of the United Nations General Assembly who was running for UN secretary-general, while his dad was vice president.

In a July 30, 2017, WhatsApp message, Hunter wrote to CEFC employee Raymond Zhao that he was “sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made 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,” Hunter allegedly wrote.

“And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every 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.”

Photos show Hunter Biden was at his father’s Wilmington, Del., home on the day of the message, which was released by the House Ways and Means Committee after receiving it from IRS supervisory agent Gary Shapley.

Shapley testified that Assistant US Attorney Lesley Wolf steered investigators away from looking into Joe Biden’s role in various international business dealings.

Congressional Republicans say Biden family business dealings in China may compromise President Biden’s ability to represent US interests on matters such as halting fentanyl shipments from China, which are fueling record-high US drug overdose deaths, and on determining the origins of COVID-19, which killed more than 1 million Americans after possibly leaking from a Chinese lab.

The CEFC partnership came years after Hunter Biden co-founded investment fund BHR Partners with Chinese state entities in 2013 — just 12 days after Hunter joined VP Biden aboard Air Force Two for an official trip to Beijing, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Hunter introduced his dad to BHR CEO Jonathan Li during the trip to China’s capital and Joe Biden later wrote college recommendation letters for Li’s children.

The status of Hunter’s 10% stake in BHR, which says it manages nearly $2.2 billion in assets, remains unclear.

Hunter Biden’s legal team said in late 2021 that he divested the investment, but neither he nor the White House have provided any transparency into the terms of the alleged sale.

President Biden is in Lithuania’s capital city for an annual NATO conference that’s expected to focus primarily on the more than 16-month-old war between Russia and Ukraine — two nations where his family also had substantial business relationships before his presidency.

Biden has not issued sanctions against a pair of Russian billionaires who sought out US property investments with then-second son Hunter Biden, and the House Oversight Committee is investigating an FBI informant’s tip that an executive at Ukrainian gas firm Burisma said he paid bribes of $5 million apiece to Joe and Hunter Biden.

Burisma initially hired Hunter to its board in early 2014 with a salary of up to $1 million as then-Vice President Biden assumed control of the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy.