The Washington Post‘s fact-checker, Glenn Kessler, gave President Joe Biden four Pinocchios for lying about his son Hunter Biden not making money in China.
Kessler documented two instances where Biden denied his son had made money in China.
In an October 22, 2020 presidential debate, Biden told moderator Kristen Welker: “My son has not made money in terms of this thing about, what are you talking about, China. I have not had … the only guy who made money from China is this guy [Donald Trump]. He’s the only one. Nobody else has made money from China.”
In a September 29, 2020, debate, Trump told Biden, “Once you became vice president [Hunter Biden] made a fortune in Ukraine, in China, in Moscow and various other places,” to which Biden responded, “That’s not true.”
Kessler wrote:
But now, nearly three years later, Biden’s assertions have been directly rebutted by Hunter himself. In court testimony last week, the younger Biden acknowledged that he in fact had been paid substantial sums in China — the first official confirmation that this was the case.
He added, “What is clear is that Hunter Biden did receive ‘a dollar from China.'”
Kessler noted that Hunter’s admission came “shortly before” lawmakers were due to interview his former business partner, Devon Archer.
Kessler also reviewed what he said were the “facts” about Hunter’s past business dealings in China.
He noted that Hunter flew on his father’s Air Force aircraft when the then-vice president was on an official trip to China in 2013, and that by Hunter’s own admission, he used the trip to connect with a Chinese business partner, and even introduced the partner to his father.
FI:LE – In this Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2013 file photo, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, left, waves as he walks out of Air Force Two with his granddaughter Finnegan Biden and son Hunter Biden at the airport in Beijing, China. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, Pool)
Kessler noted that 12 days after he was in China, Hunter joined the board of a just-formed investment advisory firm known as BHR (Bohai, Harvest and Rosemont), whose partners included Chinese entities, including the partner he introduced to his father.
The goal was to raise $1.5 billion, although they fell short of that, Kessler said. He wrote that Hunter later acquired a 10 percent interest in the entity overseeing the fund, but his lawyers claimed he divested of it after his father was elected president.
Kessler noted that after Biden left public office, Hunter in 2017 inked a deal with Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC China Energy, and that documents found on his laptop showed that over the course of 14 months, CEFC and its executives paid $4.8 million to entities controlled by Hunter Biden and Joe Biden’s brother, James.
Kessler also noted that a former Hunter business partner, Tony Bobulinski, said an email found on Hunter’s laptop about a proposed partnership agreement involving CEFC that said 10 percent would be “held by H for the big guy,” was a reference to Joe Biden.
“What wasn’t clear until now was how much money Hunter Biden personally received from these deals,” Kessler wrote.
Kessler wrote that last week, under questioning from U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika, Hunter acknowledged he earned nearly $2.4 million in 2017 and $2.2 million in 2018, ” most of which came from Chinese or Ukrainian interests.”
Under questioning, he acknowledged that in 2017 he earned just under a million dollars from a company he formed (Hudson West) with a CEO of a Chinese business conglomerate, and then latter he earned an additional $644,000 from CEFC later that year.
He also acknowledged he earned $500,000 in directors fees from Ukrainian natural gas and oil company Burisma, as well as $70,000 from Romanian business interests.
Hunter acknowledged that on March 22, 2018, he received a “million dollar payment” for legal fees for Patrick Ho, a CEFC official who was later charged in connection with a scheme to bribe African leaders.
Kessler also noted that both Democrats and Republicans acknowledged that Devon Archer testified behind closed doors that Hunter had put his father on speaker phone with business associates about “20 times over the course of a decade” — despite Biden saying he had “never spoken to” his son about his business dealings.
Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s former business partner, arrives on Capitol Hill to give closed-door testimony to the House Oversight Committee in the Republican-led investigations into President Joe Biden’s son, in Washington, Monday, July 31, 2023. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Democrats and the White House claimed those instances did not amount to a “substantive” conversation.
A Biden aide told Kessler that at the time Biden made his false claims he was “addressing a barrage of false attacks by Donald Trump.”
Kessler conceded that Biden may have been sloppy in his phrasing, but concluded, “The fact remains that Biden, during the debate, denied his son had made money in China. In court last week, his son has said he earned hundreds of thousands of dollars from Chinese business deals.”
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