by Steven Richards and John Solomon
In the end, there really was a silk road of money that flowed from China to the Biden family’s coffers, despite Joe Biden’s insistence to the contrary.
The U.S. Attorney’s office in Delaware — which charged Hunter Biden with tax and gun crimes last month — released to a federal court last week a now-scuttled plea deal that affirmed the presidential son got millions himself from Chinese sources in 2017-18 alone. That included money from a Chinese energy firm as well as legal payments from a Chinese executive convicted of bribery.
The records confirm reporting from investigative author Peter Schweizer’s book “Red Handed,” Just the News stories and investigations by Congress that date to 2020 when Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, revealed bank transfers from Beijing to Biden accounts.
Lawmakers told Just the News last week that the size of the payments from communist China and Joe Biden’s efforts to conceal them raise larger questions about whether such monies to his family caused the president to take actions like refusing to shoot down a Chinese spy balloon or shuttering the FBI’s main Chinese counter-intelligence program rooting out spies in U.S. academia.
The revelations raise questions whether Biden “would be sympathetic to the concerns of other nations or individuals based on previous relationships,” said Rep. Scott Perry, R-Penn., a member of the House Oversight Committee investigating the Biden family’s finances, “And whether that is generally viewed as being compromised.
“When you look at China and their Thousand Talents program, and other programs similar to that, where they pick key individual keys or key government individuals to compromise them, then the policy that would support the United States of America never happens because the individuals are compromised. That is what is so concerning about this,” Perry told the Just the News, No Noise television show last week.
U.S. Attorney David Weiss’ office in Delaware last week released the text of the Hunter Biden plea deal that Judge Maryellen Noreika rejected and which was scrutinized by critics over its broad immunity provision the Department of Justice was prepared to gift the younger Biden.
The description of Hunter Biden’s income in Exhibit 1 of the deal confirms much of the compensation he was previously alleged to have received from Ukraine and China and covers the period from 2016 to 2019. Overall, in 2017 and 2018 Hunter Biden received approximately $4.9 million from confirmed foreign sources.
In 2017, Hunter Biden received $1 million from “a company he formed with the CEO of a Chinese business conglomerate,” according to the agreement. The next year, he would receive even more: $2.6 million from the same source.
Those payments, according to records released by Congress, came from CEFC China Energy Co. Ltd (CEFC). CEFC was founded by Ye Jianming who had close ties to the ruling Chinese Communist Party. The group received funding from the state-owned China Development Bank and Ye was also the deputy secretary general of the China Association for International Friendly Contact (CAIFC), an alleged arm of the General Political Department of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
Additionally, as Grassley wrote to then-Attorney General William Barr in November 2020 quoting an internal CEFC document, the company’s mission was “[t]o expand cooperation in the international energy economy and contribute to the national development,” that is, China’s national development.
Exhibit 1 also lists a $664,000 payment from a “Chinese infrastructure investment company.” Based on a Grassley-Johnson report — released jointly in September 2020 by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (chaired by Johnson) and the Senate Finance Committee (chaired by Grassley) — his company is likely CEFC Infrastructure Investment (US) LLC. This company is a subsidiary of CEFC China Energy Company and listed Gongwen Dong — Ye Jianming’s deputy — as its director.
The Grassley-Johnson report claimed that almost $5 million was sent to the Hunter Biden’s accounts from CEFC via Hudson West III, an entity set up by the younger Biden and CEFC. It is unclear if some of the money remained in the company, given the discrepancy between the plea agreement and the Senate report.
In 2018, Hunter Biden also received a $1 million payment for the legal representation of Patrick Ho, who was charged in the United States for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and money laundering. He was implicated and convicted in a scheme at the United Nations to bribe African officials in Chad and Uganda to acquire favorable terms for CEFC China Energy to expand its operations in Africa.
CEFC was at the same time also seeking to buy up U.S. and Western energy assets when it approached Hunter Biden starting in late 2015, according to text messages obtained by Just the News.
Those text messages, given to the FBI by one of Hunter Biden’s former business partners, showed that CEFC was hoping to enter the U.S. energy market through its business arrangements with Hunter Biden. The prominence of the Biden family was floated by business partners as an attractive selling point to the Chinese, according to a text message sent to Tony Bobulinski.
Further, the plea agreement shows Hunter Biden received $500,000 in compensation from Burisma Holdings in 2017. The Ukrainian energy company remains at the center of corruption accusations against Joe Biden. Back in 2015, Burisma Holdings pressured Hunter Biden to deal with a Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating the firm for corruption, Just the News previously reported. The prosecutor was later fired after then-Vice President Joe Biden — the point person for the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy — demanded his ouster.
During the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden strenuously denied accusations that his son or family had received money from Chinese sources or that his son’s business in Ukraine was improper.
“Nothing was unethical. Here’s what the deal. With regard to Ukraine. We had this whole question about whether or not, because he was on the board, I later learned of Burisma, a company that somehow, I had done something wrong, yet every single solitary person, when he was going through his impeachment, testifying under oath, who work for him, said I did my job impeccably,” Joe Biden said during an October 2020 presidential debate. “I carried out U.S. policy, not one single solitary thing was out of line, not a single thing, number one.”
He continued, “My son has not made money in terms of this thing about, what are you talking about, China. I have not had… the only guy who made money from China is this guy [Trump].”
Since the release of the plea agreement, the Washington Post has given these claims four Pinocchios, saying “now, nearly three years later, Biden’s assertions have been directly rebutted by Hunter himself” through his own court testimony.
– – –
John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist, author and digital media entrepreneur who serves as Chief Executive Officer and Editor in Chief of Just the News. Before founding Just the News, Solomon played key reporting and executive roles at some of America’s most important journalism institutions, such as The Associated Press, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Newsweek, The Daily Beast and The Hill. Steven is a freelance investigative researcher for Just the News who previously worked for the Government Accountability Institute.
