Sen. Hagerty asks AG Garland if Joe Biden was ‘involved with’ Hunter’s business deals
WASHINGTON — Sen. Bill Hagerty on Tuesday pressed Attorney General Merrick Garland about the appearance that President Biden “was involved with” his son Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings.
“Do you have any reason to dispute the evidence that indicates that President Biden was involved with and using money from Hunter Biden’s business deals?” Hagerty (R-Tenn.) asked Garland at a Senate subcommittee hearing.
Hagerty cited The Post’s recent reporting about Hunter Biden business partner Eric Schwerin visiting the White House and vice president’s residence at least 19 times while Joe Biden was vice president and prior reports on the first son’s financial role in the family.
Garland declined to divulge details and separately insisted to both Hagerty and Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) that a special counsel wasn’t needed because an investigation of the first son by the US attorney’s office in Delaware would continue without political interference.
Schwerin’s visits to meet with Joe Biden or his staff cast further doubt on the president’s claim to be uninvolved with his son’s business pursuits in countries where he held sway. Previous reporting showed that Hunter Biden introduced his dad to business associates from China, Mexico, Russia and Ukraine — including at the vice president’s residence in Washington.
“There are emails and photographs that show that President Biden, while he was vice president, met several of Hunter Biden’s business associates, including a Burisma executive — that’s the energy company that paid Hunter Biden a million dollars per year to sit on its board — and the Russian billionaire who paid Hunter’s firm $3.5 million around the same time. All of this is while President Biden was running portions of the United States foreign policy, including Ukraine,” Hagerty told Garland.
“There’s evidence that Hunter Biden paid for Joe Biden’s living expenses while he was vice president. A Hunter Biden email from 2010 entitled ‘JRB bills’ — Joe R. Biden bills —discusses paying for the upkeep of Joe Biden’s large lakefront home [and there is] another 2010 email from a Biden confidant to Hunter Biden saying, ‘your dad just called me he could use some positive news about his future earnings potential.'”
Hagerty added, “Hunter Biden’s business partner made nine visits to the White House between 2009 and 2013 and met with Joe Biden in the West Wing while Joe Biden was vice president. And we have a text message from Hunter Biden to his daughter stating that don’t worry, unlike pop — meaning Joe Biden — I won’t make you give me half your salary. So it seems President Biden was serving as vice president and running US foreign policy at the same time that his son Hunter Biden was raking in money from shady foreign business deals. And this was money that was being diverted to benefit Vice President Biden.”
Garland revealed little in his response, saying it was department policy not to comment. Hagerty argued that recent comments from White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain and White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield about Biden’s belief in his son’s innocence bolstered the case for a special counsel.
The US attorney in Delaware, David Weiss, is a Trump administration holdover who was allowed to retain his position to continue the probe of Hunter Biden, who reportedly recently paid a more than $1 million tax bill in a bid to avoid prosecution. The younger Biden is believed to be under investigation for possible tax fraud, money laundering and unregistered lobbying for foreign clients.
The first son’s overseas dealings have gained significant attention since the Washington Post and New York Times last month belatedly verified documents from a former Hunter Biden laptop that were first reported by The Post in October 2020.
PBS reporter Lisa Desjardins asked White House press secretary Jen Psaki at her Monday briefing about The Post’s reporting on Schwerin’s visits to the White House.
“The New York Post is reporting, looking at White House visitor logs, that there were 19 visits to the White House while the president was vice president by Hunter Biden’s business partner, including one with the vice president. Can you help us understand why that business partner had access and what those meetings were about?” Desjardins asked.
“I don’t have any information on that,” Psaki replied. “I’m happy to check and see if we have any more comment.”
The reply was Psaki’s lastest brush-off of inquiries about the first son. Last month, Psaki pleaded ignorance when asked by The Post about potential conflicts of interest involving President Biden’s decision-making with regards to China and Russia.
Psaki said this month that President Biden is sticking to his 2019 claim that he had “never spoken” with Hunter Biden about “his overseas business dealings” — despite mounting evidence to the contrary.
Emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop indicate that Joe Biden attended a 2015 DC dinner with a group of his son’s associates — including Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi of Ukraine, a trio of Kazakhs and the Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina and her husband, ex-Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov.
A photo depicts Joe Biden posing with the Kazakhstani group at the dinner and one day after the gathering, Pozharskyi emailed the then-second son to thank him for the opportunity to meet his father.
A report drafted by Republican-led Senate committees in 2020 said that Baturina in 2014 paid $3.5 million to a firm linked to Hunter Biden. Baturina is believed to be Russia’s richest woman, but doesn’t face US sanctions that hit other Russian billionaires in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
At his 2020 impeachment trial, President Donald Trump’s defense team cited visitor logs that showed Biden met with his son’s partner Devon Archer on April 16, 2014, around the time Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma, which was founded by corrupt pro-Russia oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky. Trump attorney Pam Bondi argued that Trump was right to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens because Joe Biden may have been involved in the Burisma arrangement. Archer joined Burisma before Hunter Biden did.
In China, Joe Biden allegedly was involved with his son’s dealings with CEFC China Energy, which the Washington Post reported this month paid Hunter Biden and his uncle Jim Biden $4.8 million in 2017 and 2018.
Former Hunter Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski says that he spoke with Joe Biden in May 2017 about the Chinese venture. A May 13, 2017, email indicated that the “big guy” would get a 10 percent equity stake in a corporate entity established with CEFC.
Bobulinski alleges that the president was the “big guy” and emails show that in September 2017, Hunter Biden asked for a new sign and more keys to an office he was renting in DC’s House of Sweden office building. The sign was to say, “The Biden Foundation and Hudson West (CEFC-US)” and the keys were for his father, Jill and Jim Biden, and a Chinese executive named Gongwen Dong. A spokeswoman for the agency that oversees the property said, however, that the sign was never changed and the keys were not picked up.
Also in China, Hunter Biden cofounded an investment firm called BHR Partners in 2013 less than two weeks after flying with his father to Beijing aboard Air Force Two. Hunter introduced Joe Biden to BHR CEO Jonathan Li in the lobby of a hotel in China’s capital. The fund is controlled in part by state-owned entities and facilitated the 2016 sale for $3.8 billion of a Congolese cobalt mine from a US company to the firm China Molybdenum. Cobalt is a key component in electric car batteries.
Hunter Biden’s attorney Chris Clark said less than a week after President Biden’s November summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping that the first son divested a 10 percent stake in BHR Partners. Hunter Biden and the White House provided no further details.
Photos and emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop further indicate that Joe Biden in 2015 hosted his son and a group of Mexican business associates at the vice president’s official residence. The elder Biden posed for a photo with Hunter and a group that included Mexican billionaires Carlos Slim and Miguel Alemán Velasco.
In 2016, Hunter Biden apparently emailed one of his Mexican associates while aboard Air Force Two for an official visit to Mexico, complaining that he hadn’t received reciprocal business favors after “I have brought every single person you have ever asked me to bring to the F’ing White House and the Vice President’s house and the inauguration.”
Since his father became president, Hunter Biden launched an art career seeking as much as $500,000 for his novice works. The White House developed a plan for those sales to theoretically be anonymous to prevent possible influence-peddling, but ethics experts say that the arrangement actually creates greater corruption concerns.
Hunter received at least $375,000 last year for five prints at a Hollywood art show attended by one of his father’s ambassador nominees, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.
