Two top Republican Senate investigators shared more than 200 pages of investigative materials related to Hunter Biden with the prosecutor running the criminal investigation into the son of President Joe Biden.
U.S. Attorney David Weiss, the Delaware prosecutor overseeing the Department of Justice’s case, received 221 pages of attachments on Wednesday packed with a host of details related to the younger Biden’s overseas business dealings in China, Ukraine, and elsewhere, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) announce on Wednesday. Weiss will be the one to decide whether to indict Hunter Biden.
“Today, in light of your and DOJ’s failure to respond to our legitimate congressional oversight requests and as part of our ongoing congressional investigation, we are transmitting to you over two hundred pages of records relating to the Biden family’s connections to the Chinese regime and persons connected to its military and intelligence elements,” Grassley and Johnson wrote to Weiss. “These records include over one hundred pages of unredacted and previously unreleased bank records relating to one of Hunter Biden’s businesses, Hudson West III.”
The senators added: “If you are conducting a full and complete investigation, you should already possess these records. In the case that you are not and do not possess these records, we suggest that you review them in detail.”
In February 2021, Joe Biden asked all Senate-confirmed U.S. attorneys appointed by Trump for their resignations, with Weiss the exception. John Durham was asked to step down as the U.S. attorney for Connecticut but was kept on as special counsel to continue his investigation into the FBI’s Trump-Russia inquiry.
The FBI agents who have been investigating Hunter Biden believe they have unearthed enough evidence to charge him with crimes related to tax fraud and lying during his purchase of a handgun, according to numerous reports.
FBI HAS ‘VOLUMNIOUS EVIDENCE’ OF HUNTER BIDEN’S ‘POTENTIAL CRIMINAL CONDUCT’
Much of the GOP letter’s focus was on a Chinese government-linked company called CEFC China Energy, whose energy tycoon leader, Ye Jianming, was tied to the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army.
Grassley and Johnson wrote that “some of the central CEFC players mentioned in the attached records are Hunter Biden’s Chinese business associates.” The senators called Ye “a frequent figure in the Biden family’s financial dealings with China.”
Ye has since disappeared in China after Chinese state media linked him to a corruption case in 2018, which led CEFC to go bankrupt.
Patrick Ho, Ye’s top lieutenant, was sentenced to three years in prison in March 2019 for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The case against Ho revealed that some evidence had been obtained through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Grassley and Johnson have accused the Justice Department of giving them the run-around in response to their requests for all intelligence records tied to Ye, Ho, and others.
The first call Ho made after his arrest in 2017 was to James Biden, who is Hunter Biden’s uncle and Joe Biden’s brother. James Biden has said he thought Ho’s call was intended for Hunter Biden.
Hunter Biden referred to Ho as the “f***ing spy chief of China” and to Ye as “my partner” in a 47-minute recording dated May 11, 2018. CEFC paid Hunter Biden a $1 million retainer to represent Ho.
“After Patrick Ho became associated with criminal activity, Hunter Biden didn’t cease his relationship with him, rather he accelerated it and leveraged the relationship to make money. We are including unredacted copies of these records in this production to you,” Grassley and Johnson wrote to Weiss.
Grassley and Johnson sent a May letter to Weiss asking about possible conflicts of interest and the existence of recusals within the Justice Department, pressing the federal prosecutor on whether he was being properly supported by Main Justice, and inquiring about what steps he had taken during his investigation, including whether he had issued grand jury subpoenas related to Hunter Biden’s Chinese business dealings.
“You failed to answer and instead the Department of Justice interceded to respond on your behalf, and it also failed to answer our questions,” Grassley and Johnson wrote to Weiss on Wednesday.
Grassley and Johnson gave speeches in March and April on the Biden family’s overseas dealings and told Weiss that “the bank records we are providing you today supplement those floor speeches.”
A September 2020 report by Grassley and Johnson concluded Hunter Biden “opened a bank account with” CEFC deputy Gongwen Dong to fund a $100,000 global spending spree with his uncle James Biden and James’s wife, Sara.
“Gongwen Dong is a business associate of Ye who executed numerous transactions on Ye’s behalf,” Grassley and Johnson wrote to Weiss. “Gongwen served as a manager/officer of Hudson West III, Hudson West IV, and Hudson West V. These are business entities associated with Hunter Biden, which shows the close business and financial relationship between the two of them.”
A November 2020 follow-up Grassley-Johnson report said that in 2017, Ye was “actively working to build CEFC by making investments around the world” and “these efforts involved cultivating ties with Russia and actors connected to Russian President Vladimir Putin.”
Grassley and Johnson also pointed to JiaQi Bao, a Chinese business assistant for Hunter Biden, telling Weiss that Hunter Biden’s company sent multiple payments to her totaling nearly $30,000.
Rep. James Comer (R-KY) sent a separate Wednesday letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray warning that Hunter Biden’s history with his Chinese business associate might be a “national security threat” that the bureau needs to investigate.
“Based on recent protected disclosures to my office, the FBI has within its possession significant, impactful, and voluminous evidence with respect to potential criminal conduct by Hunter Biden and James Biden,” Grassley said in another October letter to Weiss, Wray, and Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Hunter Biden controversially held a lucrative position on the board of Ukrainian energy giant Burisma while his father was vice president. He also pursued business deals in China and elsewhere during and after his father’s tenure, raking in millions thanks to these associations.
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Whistleblower allegations emerged this summer that FBI supervisory intelligence analyst Brian Auten opened an assessment in August 2020 that was used by FBI headquarters to mislabel accurate information about Hunter Biden as disinformation, according to disclosures made public by Grassley. Whistleblowers also said Timothy Thibault, the now-former FBI assistant special agent in charge of the Washington Field Office, shut down a line of inquiry into Hunter Biden in October 2020 despite the fact that some of the details were known to be true at the time.
Wray said he found these whistleblower allegations “deeply troubling” when asked about them in early August.
