A recent special report by Politico casting “doubts” on several of President Joe Biden’s key denials regarding his son Hunter Biden shows that the establishment media may be turning against him just a year out from the 2024 presidential election.
While conservative outlets, including Breitbart News, have covered the revelations and developments of the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into the Biden family regularly, the deep dive by an establishment media outlet spells political trouble for Biden.
Politico‘s report, published Sunday, said that although Biden “hasn’t been shown to have committed wrongdoing,” a review of “recent developments cast doubt on several statements.”
The report — albeit belatedly — casts doubt on five major claims by Biden.
First, the report examined White House denials that then-Vice President Biden met with an executive from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma at an April 2015 dinner at Cafe Milano — despite emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop indicating a meeting occurred.
However, the report noted, when former Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer testified in July 2023 under the penalty of perjury to Congress that Joe Biden was at the meeting, the White House no longer denied the meeting happened, but changed its response to, “As we have said many times before, the President was not in business with his son or anyone else in the family.”
Politico report said:
The explicit White House denial of even an informal encounter, reported here for the first time, was not the only time that statements made by Biden and his camp about Hunter Biden’s dealings have been contradicted by others.
Next, the Politico report examined the claim that the Hunter Biden laptop was part of a Russian disinformation plot — which marked somewhat of a fact-check of its own reporting from 2020. In October 2020, then-Politico and current CNN reporter Natasha Bertrand published a story suggesting that the Hunter Biden laptop story — first reported by then-New York Post reporter and current Breitbart News Political Editor Emma-Jo Morris — was part of a Russian plot.
Politico’s recent report noted that a Politico reporter in September 2021 authenticated several emails from the laptop, and that in June, House Republicans published interviews with two IRS agents who had notes of a meeting an IRS agent and whistleblower had with FBI agents in October 2020 to discuss several Hunter Biden laptops that were turned in to the FBI by Delaware repair shop owner Mac Isaac.
The whistleblower’s notes showed that the FBI had found evidence the laptops indeed belonged to Hunter Biden, such as phone records between Hunter and the repair shop and financial records showing that Hunter had stopped at a nearby cigar shop around the time the laptops were dropped off.
Politico reported, “The White House did not respond to questions about the computer files.”
Next, the report examines Joe Biden’s own claim in August 2019 that he “never discussed” with his family members “anything having to do with their businesses.”
It noted that in October 2020, former Hunter Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski said in a statement that he discussed Hunter Biden’s Chinese business ventures with Joe Biden. Bobulinski said the claim that Biden never discussed business with his son was “false.” It noted that Bobulinski also said Hunter Biden and his uncle James Biden introduced him to Joe Biden in May 2017, and that they met for about an hour and that they discussed “the Bidens’ history, the Bidens’ family business plans with the Chinese, with which he was plainly familiar, at least at a high level.”
It noted that more recently, in September, House Republicans released an FBI summary of an interview agents conducted with Bobulinski in the fall of 2020, showing that Bobulinski had told FBI investigators the same story.
The report also noted that in September, a Wall Street Journal story said Joe Biden as a senator sometimes participated in business calls with relatives.
As with the April 2015 dinner, the White House denied that Biden ever discussed business dealings with his son but then later changed their response to, “The president was never in business with his son.”
When Politico asked if Biden stood by his claims of never discussing his family’s business dealings, the White House cited testimony of House witnesses who said they did not observe any such interactions, according to the report.
Next, Politico looked at Biden’s claim that Hunter Biden never made money from China.
“My son has not made money in terms of this thing about, what are you talking about, China,” the report cited Biden as saying during an October 2020 debate.
The Politico report said, “The more general claim that Hunter Biden did not make money from China is false,” adding that “in court this July, Hunter Biden acknowledged hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments from a Chinese energy firm, CEFC, and people associated with it, after his father’s vice presidency.”
Lastly, Politico looked into Biden’s claim that his relatives have not profited off his name.
A 2020 Senate Republican report detailed alleged payments made by the CEFC and people associated with it to accounts linked with Hunter Biden, James Biden, and James’ wife Sara Biden.
The report noted that in transcripts of Bobulinski’s FBI interview, released in September by the House Ways and Means Committee, he told agents that James and Hunter Biden helped to open doors for CEFC during Joe Biden’s vice presidency without being compensated, but that they wanted payment from CEFC after Biden left office.
Bobulinski said they believed CEFC owed them money that went to the Chinese company “through its use of the Biden family name to advance their business dealings,” according to his interview.
The report notes that another Hunter Biden business partner, Rob Walker, told the FBI in transcripts released by House Republicans in June that Hunter Biden arranged for his father to stop by a lunch with their Chinese business partners at the Four Seasons hotel in Washington, DC.
Archer also told congressional investigators in July that “a large part of the value” Hunter Biden brought to Burisma was the Biden family “brand” — and that Joe Biden “brought the most value to the brand,” the Politico report noted. It added:
Outside of the dealings covered by that report, there are other signs that Biden’s relatives have profited from the Biden name over the years. They include allegations made by former business contacts of Hunter and James Biden in lawsuits. In one case dating to the first term of the Obama administration, when Joe Biden was vice president, a former business partner at a hedge fund alleged that — in the course of a dispute about a legal bill — James and Hunter Biden, ‘refused to pay the bill, repeatedly citing their political connections and family status as a basis for disclaiming the obligation.’ James and Hunter Biden denied the allegation.
Politico also noted several other instances or reports where James Biden and Frank Biden, Joe Biden’s youngest brother, invoked the family name or alluded to its value to help their business endeavors.
The report noted a leaked October 2011 email that was authenticated by Politico said Hunter Biden wrote that his appeal to a Chinese business partner “has nothing to do with me and everything to do with my last name.”
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