Watchdog Chuck Grassley Followed the Money Trail and Found It

Washington Post: Inside Hunter Biden’s multimillion-dollar deals with a Chinese energy company

Matt Viser, Tom Hamburger and Craig Timberg | The Washington Post 

…

While many aspects of Hunter Biden’s financial arrangement with CEFC China Energy have been previously reported and were included in a Republican-led Senate report from 2020, a Washington Post review confirmed many of the key details and found additional documents showing Biden family interactions with Chinese executives.

Over the course of 14 months, the Chinese energy conglomerate and its executives paid $4.8 million to entities controlled by Hunter Biden and his uncle, according to government records, court documents and newly disclosed bank statements, as well as emails contained on a copy of a laptop hard drive that purportedly once belonged to Hunter Biden.
…

But the new documents — which include a signed copy of a $1 million legal retainer, emails related to the wire transfers, and $3.8 million in consulting fees that are confirmed in new bank records and agreements signed by Hunter Biden — illustrate the ways in which his family profited from relationships built over Joe Biden’s decades in public service.

Hunter Biden’s overseas work has been the subject of heightened scrutiny. He has been under federal investigation as part of an inquiry into his taxes, with witnesses called before a grand jury as recently as last month. Federal prosecutors had been attempting to determine if he failed to account for income from China-related deals, The Post has previously reported, although it is unclear whether that is still a focus. Republicans, meanwhile, have pointed to the Biden family’s business deals in China, along with Hunter Biden’s past membership on the board of the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, as potential conflicts of interest.

The CEFC deal became one of the most lucrative, if short-lived, foreign ventures Hunter Biden is known to have pursued. The Post review draws in part on an analysis of a copy said to be of the hard drive of a laptop computer that Hunter Biden purportedly dropped off at a Delaware repair shop and never came to collect. The laptop was turned over to the FBI in December 2019, according to documents reviewed by The Post, and a copy of the drive was obtained by Rudy Giuliani and other advisers to then-President Donald Trump a few months before the 2020 election.
…

Biden aides and some former U.S. intelligence officials have voiced concern that the device may have been manipulated by Russia to interfere in the campaign. On Capitol Hill, Democrats have dismissed earlier reports about Hunter Biden’s work in China as lacking credibility or being part of a Russian disinformation campaign. The Post analysis included forensic work by two outside experts who assessed the authenticity of numerous emails related to the CEFC matter. In addition, The Post found that financial documents on the copy of Hunter Biden’s purported laptop match documents and information found in other records, including newly disclosed bank documents obtained by Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, a senior Republican on the Senate Finance and Judiciary committees.
…

Nonetheless, accounts linked to Hunter Biden received at least $3.79 million in payments from CEFC through consulting contracts, according to bank records and joint agreements reviewed by The Post.

Biden received an additional $1 million retainer, issued as part of an agreement to represent Patrick Ho, a CEFC official who would later be charged in the United States in connection with a multimillion-dollar scheme to bribe leaders from Chad and Uganda. That retainer agreement, in a newly uncovered document, contains the signatures of both Hunter Biden and Ho, who was later convicted and sentenced to three years in prison.
…

During the time the CEFC was active, funds were being transferred from Hunter Biden to his uncle, records show. All told, nearly $1.4 million went from Hunter’s company to one controlled by James Biden, according to a 2020 report produced by Grassley and fellow Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. The transactions were identified as potential criminal activity, a designation meant to flag potential money laundering, political corruption or other financial crimes, according to a report from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network at the Treasury Department that was reviewed by The Post.
…

View the full article here.