FBI knew all about Joe and Hunter’s business dealings, laptop authenticity — and did nothing: files
Within several days of The New York Post breaking its blockbuster 2020 story on Hunter Biden’s laptop, the FBI received a flash drive containing emails and text messages from the cellphones of one of Hunter’s business partners, confirming the contents of Hunter’s computer were real and not “disinformation,” as the FBI led social media and the public to believe.
On Oct. 23, 2020, forensic examiners from the FBI’s Computer Analysis and Response Team (CART) took into inventory the flash drive, which was loaded with the emails and texts from an iPhone and two Blackberry phones that Hunter’s former business associate Tony Bobulinski used to communicate with the president’s son about a lucrative joint venture with Chinese nationals.
The data on the flash drive covered the period from early 2015 through late 2017, according to the FBI report, known as an FD-302, which summarized the interview with Bobulinski.
“BOBULINSKI was aware that the emails published by the New York Post were legitimate because BOBULINSKI was copied on them and had records of the emails on his own cellular devices,” the interviewing agents wrote in their 13-page report.
By that point, Twitter had censored The Post’s report, based partly on the FBI’s warnings. And a group of 51 former intelligence officers, including FBI members, signed a letter suggesting the laptop was fake — even though many knew it was real.
The FBI report was buried in a 700-page document dump earlier this month by the House Ways and Means Committee, which received the records from two IRS investigators who blew the whistle on roadblocks the Justice Department threw up in their years-long probe of Hunter Biden.
The names of the FBI agents, both working out of the Washington field office, are redacted in the report. The agents handed Bobulinski’s attorney an “FD-597 Receipt for Property” for the flash drive.
While Bobulinski has briefed the media on what he told the FBI, this appears to be the first look at what the FBI documented about the nearly six-hour interview.
It’s clear from the 302 report that the FBI knew at the time that Hunter’s laptop and the Post story about it were “legitimate” and not part of any Russian disinformation plot.
Yet the FBI joined the U.S. intelligence community in pushing that false narrative to Facebook, Twitter and other media who censored the story. The FBI’s suppression campaign ran coast-to-coast, reportedly led by anti-Trump honchos Timothy Thibault in D.C. and Elvis Chan in San Francisco.
In effect, the FBI slapped a warning label on derogatory information on the Bidens that was not only easily verifiable — but actually verified.
The FBI 302 also reveals that, despite his denials ever discussing business with his son, Joe Biden personally spoke with Bobulinski about his son’s Chinese joint venture — known as Sinohawk — on two occasions: May 2, 2017, at 10:30 p.m. at the Beverly Hills Hilton Hotel bar; and May, 3, 2017, at a Milken Institute conference in Los Angeles.
The report noted that Joe Biden was to be cut in on the profits: “An additional 10% was to be held by HUNTER BIDEN for the ‘big guy,’ which was a reference to JOSEPH BIDEN.”
The FBI also noted that “BOBULINSKI witnessed a large diamond gemstone given as a gift to HUNTER BIDEN by YE [JIANMING],” one of the Chinese partners in the deal.
The US has long suspected Ye works for Chinese intelligence.
When Bobulinski told Hunter the Wall Street Journal was interested in the Chinese deal’s “ties to the Biden family,” Hunter ordered his partner to switch to encrypted messaging WhatsApp to continue their conversation, according to the FBI summary.
Bobulinski told agents he asked Joe Biden’s brother Jimmy, who was also in on the shady Beijing deal: “How are you guys doing this? Aren’t you afraid for Joe’s political campaign?”
Bobulinski said Jimmy Biden flatly answered, “Plausible deniability.” Bobulinski took this to mean that “financial transactions that ultimately benefited JOSEPH BIDEN and his family were brokered through and managed by JOSEPH BIDEN’s family members — such as HUNTER BIDEN and JAMES BIDEN — to prevent JOSEPH BIDEN’s direct involvement,” according to the FBI report.
“The structure gave JOSEPH BIDEN the ability to plausibly deny his involvement and knowledge of the transactions, while still benefiting indirectly.”
But then the FBI knew all this. Bobulinski wasn’t telling them anything they didn’t already know. Or should have known.
The FBI had already verified the laptop’s authenticity in December 2019 after it was turned in by repair shop owner John Paul Mac Isaac.
Moreover, they knew China-related messages contained on it were not fake because they would have matched communications the FBI had intercepted years earlier as part of a counterespionage probe of one of Hunter’s Chinese business partners.
Federal court exhibits I’ve reviewed reveal the agency had started monitoring the communications of Patrick Ho, then an executive at CEFC China Energy, in 2017.
CEFC officials were involved in the Sinohawk venture detailed in emails found on the laptop and Bobulinski’s phones.
The agents suspected Ho was secretly working for Chinese intelligence services. Ho was later convicted of money laundering and bribery and served time in federal prison before being sent back to China.
During the same 2017-2018 period, the FBI also tracked banking records showing wire transfers and other transactions between Ho and China-based CEFC and Hunter and Jimmy Biden. Many of these financial records show up on Hunter’s laptop.
So the FBI had obtained key China-related contents found on Hunter Biden’s laptop more than two years before it took possession of the laptop, as part of a national security investigation. But it shoved it all down a black hole.
Investigators never brought Bobulinski, a potentially star witness, back in for another interview and never put him before the Hunter Biden grand jury. Why?
Paul Sperry is a senior reporter for RealClearInvestigations. Follow him on X: @paulsperry_