As Israel exchanges Palestinian criminals and terrorists for innocent Israelis taken captive by Hamas during the 10/7 massacres, we learned that at least one American was among the freed hostages – a four-year-old little girl named Abigail Edan. Abigail’s parents were murdered by Hamas during the attack.
This is welcome news, of course, and President Joe Biden took some personal credit for her release, but there’s an interesting coincidence that The Drill Down’s hosts Peter Schweizer and Eric Eggers can’t ignore: Abigail’s great aunt is Elizabeth (Liz) Naftali, a wealthy real estate investor in Los Angeles’s fashion district and a large contributor to the Democratic Party and to the Biden family. How?
Naftali was among those patrons of the arts who bought the artwork of America’s first son, Hunter Biden, for a reported total of about $1.3 million, according to internal gallery documents reported by Business Insider this summer. President Biden appointed her to the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad in July 2022.
So, say what you will about Hunter Biden’s artistic merits, but his customer service is first-rate.
And there is more news on the Hunter Biden front. Hunter Biden has offered to testify to Congress on Dec. 13. His “offer” is his way of answering a subpoena from the House Oversight Committee, which requires him to appear, but his lawyer insists upon an open congressional hearing, where committee Democrats could be counted on to join the defense team.
That offer was rejected late Tuesday by the committee’s chairman, Rep. James Comer (R-KY), who said: “Hunter Biden is trying to play by his own rules instead of following the rules required of everyone else. That won’t stand with House Republicans. Our lawfully issued subpoena to Hunter Biden requires him to appear for a deposition on December 13.”
Comer did allow that Biden would be allowed to appear at a public hearing somewhere down the road.
As Schweizer explains on the show, this is a matter of legal tactics and picking the best “stage” for Hunter Biden’s appearance. Republicans want him to be deposed in a closed-door session, while Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell wants a public, televised setting.
Schweizer says there are two big lies in the Biden defense. The first is the argument that Joe Biden didn’t get paid. Committee Republicans insist they have the details of exactly the opposite, in the form of money transfers through shell companies and family members that wound up in his bank account.
The second big lie is that American bribery laws only matter when a direct “I give you a million dollars and you do this specific thing” is proven. Schweizer cites a 2016 email recovered from Hunter’s laptop in which he berates a Mexican businessman named Aleman Magnani as follows:
We have been talking about business deals for 7 years. And I really appreciate you letting me stay at your resort villa . . . but 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 and then you go completely silent . . . You make me feel like I’ve done something to offend you.
As fans of The Drill Down know, Schweizer broke the story of Hunter Biden’s business dealings back in the 2018 book Secret Empires, and the Government Accountability Institute he runs has continued to report on the details of this saga since then. With that in mind, the hosts suggest seven questions the committee should ask in order to get to the real truth about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings in Ukraine, China, Mexico, and elsewhere that traded on his father’s name and influence while Joe Biden served as Vice President in the Obama administration.
They are:
#1: “Did you use your father’s office to gain commercial opportunities overseas?”
#2: “Did you ever discuss foreign policy matters with your father involving people who were paying you money?”
#3: “Why did your company, Rosemont Seneca, pay for a private phone line for your father while he was Vice President?”
#4: “The Chinese government-connected entities paid you $31 million while your father was Vice President. What did they get in return?”
#5: “Who is Henry Zhao? Who is Chairman Ye? Who is Che Feng?”
#6: “You characterized money sent by Mr. Ye as ‘good faith seed money’ for your business. If so, why were those funds transferred to family members, including Biden children?”
#7: “Did you ever talk to your father or any other officials about the CFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States) review of Bohai Harvest Rosemont?”
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