House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-KY) subpoenaed James Biden’s Lion Hall Group and JBBSR, Inc., entities on Thursday because the committee could not identify “legitimate services provided by James Biden’s companies.”
Comer’s subpoena appears to be directed at obtaining records linked to President Joe Biden’s corporation, “CelticCapri Corp,” which received nearly $10 million in 2017 without specifying revenue line items. “So that’s an LLC account. It wasn’t a shell company — that was a real LLC account with more earnings in there than what we can find. So that is an account we plan to subpoena as we follow the money,” Comer said last week.
James Biden, an often overlooked member of the Biden family, is President Joe Biden’s younger brother and Hunter Biden’s uncle. James and Hunter were business partners with CEFC China Energy Co., an organization closely aligned and linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP.)
While Hunter’s complex web of wire transfers from CEFC received much attention in recent years, Comer expanded his focus to James Biden’s entities. Those entities received at least 20 wires totaling $1,398,999 through Hunter’s entities, according to the 2020 Senate Report by Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson:
[T]here is also evidence that Hunter Biden moved large sums of money from his firm, Owasco, to James Biden’s consulting firm, the Lion Hall Group. Between Aug. 14, 2017 and Aug. 3, 2018, Owasco sent 20 wires totaling $1,398,999 to the Lion Hall Group, a consulting firm that lists James Biden and his wife, Sara Biden, on the bank account. This transaction was identified for potential criminal financial activity. These transfers began less than one week after CEFC Infrastructure Investment wired $5 million to Hudson West III and Hudson West III sent its first payment of $400,000 to Owasco. Most of the payments from Owasco to the Lion Hall Group had vague notes in the memo lines, 15 of which simply indicated that they were for further credit to James Biden; however, the memo line for one of the payments read “HW3,” which indicates some of the transferred money could be from Hudson West III. When the bank contacted Sara Biden regarding the overall wire activity, she stated that the Lion Hall Group and Owasco provide international and business consulting and that the Lion Hall Group was assisting Owasco with an international client through a contract that had since terminated. Sara Biden told the bank that she would not provide any supporting documentation, and she also refused to provide additional information to more clearly explain the activity. Consequently, the bank submitted the account for closure.
Hudson West III also sent funds directly to the Lion Hall Group. According to records on file with the Committees, James B. Biden is the principal contact for the Lion Hall Group, and between January 2018 and October 2018, Hudson West III sent the Lion Hall Group outgoing wires totaling $76,746.15 with the memo, “office expense and reimbursement.”These transactions illustrate a direct financial link between Hudson West III (which was connected to CEFC, the Chinese government, and Gongwen Dong) and James Biden.
On Aug. 17, 2017, three days after the first transfer from Owasco to The Lion Hall Group, it was publicly announced that Ye’s CEFC Energy was in talks to purchase a stake in the Russian state-owned energy company Rosneft, which, as noted, later fell through.
Through the Biden family’s suspicious activity reports (SARs), the committee discovered in March that Biden associate Rob Walker received a $3 million wire transfer from CEFC. In turn, four Biden family members — Hunter, James, Hallie, and an unidentified “Biden” — received a collective $1.3 million cut from the $3 million wire transfer.
Biden family (Alex Wong, Teresa Kroeger, Win McNamee, Kris Connor, Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
“The Bidens are the best I know at doing exactly what the chairman wants from this partnership,” Hunter told a CEFC associate in 2017.
CEFC, closely linked to the CCP and Chinese President Xi Jinping, was chaired by Ye Jianming, a Hunter associate. Ye is a key individual in the Biden family’s Chinese business. Ye paid Hunter a $1 million retainer fee for legal services in 2017. Hunter also received a large diamond from Ye in February 2017 worth an estimated $80,000. Ye “had direct abiding and deep ties to Chinese intelligence when they were arranging these ideals for the Bidens,” according to Breitbart News senior contributor and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer.
Breitbart News reported in June the Biden family business received a total of $5.1 million through multiple accounts within days of Hunter Biden’s 2017 WhatsApp messages to a CEFC associate. In the first text, Hunter demanded to be paid with Joe Biden “sitting” next to him. “I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” the screen capture shows. “Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight.”
(CEFC; AP Photo; P. Richards, J. Watson/Getty Images; Twitter)
A few days later, Hunter asked a second CEFC business associate for $10 million, noting the Biden family is best at “doing exactly what the chairman wants.”
That same year, in 2017, Hunter told whistleblower Tony Bobulinski in a text exchange that he did not want to register as a foreign agent on behalf of CEFC. Now-special counsel David Weiss told a Delaware judge in July that FARA charges against Hunter were on the table. Weiss charged Hunter in August with three gun violations.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
