Yet another lie from Joe Biden and the media establishment has turned out to be false, this most recent one dealing with his son Hunter’s business dealings in China.
According to NBC News, which apparently decided now is a perfect time to actually look at the hard drive from Hunter’s laptop:
From 2013 through 2018 Hunter Biden and his company brought in about $11 million via his roles as an attorney and a board member with a Ukrainian firm accused of bribery and his work with a Chinese businessman now accused of fraud, according to an NBC News analysis of a copy of Biden’s hard drive and iCloud account and documents released by Republicans on two Senate committees.
The documents and the analysis, which don’t show what he did to earn millions from his Chinese partners, raise questions about national security, business ethics and potential legal exposure.
In December 2020, Biden acknowledged in a statement that he was the subject of a federal investigation into his taxes. NBC News was first to report that an ex-business partner had warned Biden he should amend his tax returns to disclose $400,000 in income from the Ukrainian firm, Burisma.
Specifically, NBC found that Hunter made $5.8 million from two deals with Chinese business interests, which accounted for half his income from 2013-2018.
During one of the 2020 presidential debates, Joe Biden told the American public that his son Hunter (who he says is the smartest person he knows – and this is probably true) never made any money from China.
Hunter’s most lucrative relationship was with Ye Jianming, a Chinese businessman that has been under detention on bribery charges since 2018. Jianming’s Hudson West III paid Hunter nearly $4.8 million in about a year.
Hunter also appears to have done work for one of Ye’s associates, Patrick Ho, who was convicted in U.S. federal court of bribing top officials in Chad and Uganda in pursuit of oil deals. He was sentenced to three years in prison in March 2019 and then expelled from the U.S. One $1 million wire from Hudson West to Hunter in March 2018 had the memo line “Dr Patrick Ho Chi Ping Representation.”
The “fact checkers” were already on the case years ago, with the Washington Post’s fact checker Glenn Kessler rating the following claims from Trump false, giving them “Four Pinnochios” back in 2019:
- “When Biden’s son walks out of China with $1.5 billion in a fund, and the biggest funds in the world can’t get money out of China, and he’s there for one quick meeting and he flies in on Air Force Two, I think that’s a horrible thing. I think it’s a horrible thing.” — President Trump, remarks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Sept. 25, 2019
- “Ask how his son made millions of dollars from Ukraine, made millions of dollars from China, even though he had no expertise whatsoever.” — Trump, in remarks to reporters with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Sept. 24
- “The son took money from China — a lot of money from China.” — Trump, remarks to reporters at the United Nations, Sept. 23
We know for sure that the claims in the second and third bullet point are unquestionably true. Interestingly enough, the only claim that Kessler actually dissects is the first, which makes reference to $1.5 billion in a fund,” and then bases the entire fact check rating around that specific claim. Perhaps he knew exactly how the latter two claims would age.
While Trump characterized Hunter as “waking away with” $1.5 billion in a fund, the fund in question, called BHR Partners, was a fund that aimed to raise $1.5 billion. Hunter received a 10% interest in the fund.
“Affiliates of the advisory firm had said they planned to raise $1.5 billion, but it appears the fundraising fell far short of that” – Kessler wrote – which is contradicted by BHR’s website which now claims to manage assets that equal roughly $2.24 billion.
While this could be just written off as Trump misspeaking or being imprecise with language, Kessler uses it as an opportunity to provide more “context” for Hunter’s shady business dealings. The main sources for his “fact check,” which aims to assure us that Hunter Biden in no way profited from a fund he owns 10% of, include:
- “The Biden camp”
- A representative for BHR
- George Misires, a lawyer for Hunter Biden
So, we’re just supposed to take the word of those who desperately want every Hunter scandal swept under the rug. Aren’t the fact checkers great?
What Kessler doesn’t include in his analysis is of note – in trying to distance Hunter financially from BHR, he doesn’t include salacious details such as the fact that the others involved in this venture included Christopher Heinz, the stepson of John Kerry, and the Thorton Group, which is owned by the nephew of notorious mobster Whitey Bulger and son of former Massachusetts State Senator Billy Bulger.
Kessler concludes his “fact check” with the following:
One could argue Hunter Biden has been trading off his father’s name, and certainly arranging a handshake between a business partner and the vice president in China raises eyebrows. But Hunter Biden did not raise money for the fund; instead, he was on a board that advised potential investors. He did not obtain an equity stake until after his father was no longer vice president — and that investment of less than half a million dollars has not yet yielded a payoff for Hunter Biden, according to his attorney.
Apparently in the world of Kessler one isn’t trading off their family name if said family member stops being Vice President at any point during the transaction.
Matt Palumbo is the author of The Man Behind the Curtain: Inside the Secret Network of George Soros
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