White House claims ‘zero evidence’ Joe Biden involved in Hunter’s business deals as GOP hunts bank records
WASHINGTON — White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed Monday that President Biden “wasn’t involved” in his son Hunter’s foreign business dealings — despite mounting evidence to the contrary as House Republicans seek bank records to prove it.
Jean-Pierre made the comment at her first briefing since Delaware US Attorney David Weiss was granted special counsel authority Friday to continue his years-long investigation of the first son, now 53.
“If you think about what Republicans in Congress have tried to do for years — right? — they have been making claims of, and allegations — right? — about [the] president on this front, over and over again,” the press secretary said when asked if Weiss might uncover evidence of Joe Biden’s involvement in his son’s ventures in places like China and Ukraine.
“And month after month, year after year, they have been investigating every single angle of this and looking at and looking for any evidence to back their allegations,” Jean-Pierre went on. “That’s what they’ve been do[ing] for years, for months, and we’ve seen it over the past several weeks. And what’s been the result of that? If you ask yourself, what we have seen from that? They keep turning up documents and witnesses showing that the president wasn’t involved, never discussed these business dealings and did nothing wrong.
“There’s been zero evidence showing otherwise. And so that’s what we have seen over the past several months. That’s what we’ve seen over the past several years. So I’ll leave it at that.”
In fact, there is significant and growing evidence, including witness statements and documents from Hunter’s abandoned laptop, that show Joe Biden was involved in his son’s influence-peddling affairs.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) called on the president last week to “give us his bank records” to show he didn’t profit as Republicans move closer to launching an impeachment inquiry focusing on Joe Biden’s role in his relatives’ dealings and an alleged coverup of the Hunter Biden investigation by Weiss’ office, which allegedly steered IRS investigators away from focusing on Joe Biden’s reported role.
The then-vice president allegedly attended two dinners with his son’s Russian, Kazakhstani and Ukrainian oligarch associates and allegedly met with his son’s business partners in two separate Chinese government-linked ventures.
Joe Biden was on speaker phone about 20 times during his son’s business meetings, Hunter’s former associate Devon Archer told the House Oversight Committee on July 31.
Hunter Biden wrote in emails retrieved from his former laptop that he had to give “half” of his income to Joe Biden and the House Oversight Committee in May identified nine Biden family members who allegedly received foreign revenue.
The Oversight Committee has not yet subpoenaed bank records belonging to members of the Biden family, but are expected to do so later this year.
Jean-Pierre made the remark in the very room where Joe Biden in 2014 led a tour with his son Hunter and Mexican business associates, whom the then-second son also brought to the official vice president’s residence and connected with various Obama-Biden administration officials as he sought out business partnerships.
Archer said in an interview this month with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that it’s “categorically false” to say the elder Biden was uninvolved in Hunter’s foreign business relationships.
“He was aware of Hunter’s business, he met with Hunter’s business partners, I mean you found a letter that illustrates that he knew me,” Archer said, referring to a Jan. 20, 2011, note from then-Vice President Biden expressing his pleasure that Archer was working with Hunter and thanking him for joining a lunch with visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao.
Archer revealed to Congress that the elder Biden attended two separate dinners at Washington’s Café Milano — first in 2014 and again 2015 — with his son’s Eastern European and Central Asian patrons, rather than one as previously reported.
Although Jean-Pierre was reacting to a hypothetically hard-charging investigation by Weiss, congressional Republicans expressed dismay Friday at the Delaware prosecutor’s new position, noting that he’s at the center of an alleged coverup in the case.
IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, who investigated Hunter for three and five years, respectively, said in recent congressional testimony that officials in Weiss’ office blocked them from investigating Joe Biden’s role in business dealings — despite communications directly implicating him, including a threatening July 30, 2017, WhatsApp message in which Hunter wrote he was “sitting here with my father” and threatened retribution if a deal was aborted, immediately preceding the transfer of $5.1 million from Chinese-government-linked CEFC China Energy to Biden-linked accounts.
Joe Biden, referred to as the “big guy,” was penciled in for a 10% cut of a venture with CEFC, according to a May 2017 email from Hunter’s laptop. He allegedly met twice with his son’s CEFC partners, including Tony Bobulinski, and was listed as a participant on an October 2017 call about CEFC’s attempt to buy US natural gas.
Years earlier in a different Chinese venture, Hunter Biden co-founded state-backed investment fund BHR Partners in 2013 — within 12 days of traveling to Beijing aboard Air Force Two with his father for an official visit. Joe Biden had coffee with BHR Partners’s incoming CEO Jonathan Li during that trip and Hunter put Li on speaker phone with his dad during a subsequent visit by the first son to China, Archer testified.
Joe Biden also wrote college recommendation letters for Li’s children. Hunter held a 10% stake in BHR Partners at least through part of 2021.
The IRS investigators who looked into Hunter’s alleged failure to pay $2.2 million in federal tax on $8.3 million in foreign income from 2014 to 2019 said that Weiss’ office never made them aware of an FBI informant’s tipoff, which had been referred to him, that Joe Biden was allegedly involved in a $10 million bribery scheme involving Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings.
Burisma also paid Hunter Biden up to $1 million per year to serve on its board as his father led the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy.
The informant told the bureau in 2020 that Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky claimed in 2016 that he was “coerced” into paying $10 million in bribes to Joe and Hunter Biden in order to secure Joe Biden’s help in pushing for the firing of Ukrainian prosecutor-general Viktor Shokin, who was ousted in March 2016.
Archer told Congress that in December 2015, Hunter stepped away from a dinner in Dubai to call his father, joined by Zlochevsky and Burisma board advisor Vadym Pozharskyi, whom Joe Biden had met at Cafe Milano.
Joe Biden has tried to laugh off the bribery allegation, asking in June, “Where’s the money?”
At his first dinner with Hunter’s associates at Café Milano, which Archer said happened sometime in spring 2014, the sitting vice president allegedly dined with Russian billionaire and former Moscow first lady Yelena Baturina. Baturina had transferred $3.5 million that February to an account linked to Archer and Hunter Biden as she sought out US property investments, Kazakhstani businessman Kenes Rakishev, who wired $142,300 for a luxury car for Hunter Biden, and former Kazakhstani Prime Minister Karim Massimov.
The second meal in April 2015 featured a different lineup — including Pozharskyi of Burisma, which had added Hunter Biden and Archer to its board in spring 2014. Archer didn’t name Baturina in his testimony, but Baturina was discussed as an invitee in emails from Hunter’s laptop and a different attendee of the dinner told The Post this year he saw her there.
Baturina and another Russian billionaire with whom Hunter partnered on US real estate shopping, former military contractor Vladimir Yevtushenkov, remain unsanctioned by President Biden — who has imposed stiff sanctions on Russia’s business elite in a bid to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“There was no business-deals specifics discussed ever at any of these things, but it was — it was a nice, you know, conversation,” Archer told Carlson about Joe Biden’s engagements with partners.
Hunter sold his ability to navigate the “regulatory environment” in Washington, which in practice means “selling access, at the end of the day,” Archer said, meaning Joe Biden’s voice on the line was “prize enough” to demonstrate Hunter’s pull.
“In the rear view,” Archer added, “it’s an abuse of soft power, I’d say.”
