by Steven Richards and John Solomon
Hunter Biden received a $250,000 loan from a Chinese businessman just three months after his father launched his 2020 presidential campaign, and he later transferred the debt to a Hollywood lawyer he befriended, according to evidence gathered by federal and congressional investigators.
The House Oversight Committee first disclosed a few weeks ago that Hunter Biden had gotten a $250,000 wire in July 2019 and used his father’s address in Delaware for the transfer. It was one of the later known foreign payments that Hunter Biden received before he fell on hard times.
Documents gathered by federal law enforcement and reviewed by Just the News show Hunter Biden considered the wire to be a July 25, 2019 loan from Xiangsheng “Jonathan” Li, a Chinese businessman whom he had been doing business with for over a decade when they created an investment fund under the brand name Bohai Harvest RST (BHR).
After Joe Biden became president, the records show, Hunter Biden transferred the debt to Kevin Morris, a Hollywood lawyer whom he befriended after they met at a November 2019 Joe Biden campaign fundraiser in Los Angeles.
The debt was “assumed” by Morris on Nov. 17, 2021 when the Hollywood lawyer acquired Hunter Biden’s stake in the BHR partnership and a separate company called Skaneateles, LLC, according to one record reviewed by Just the News. Hunter Biden “is no longer the primary obligor” as a result of the transaction with Morris, that memo stated.
Morris’ assumption of the debt is part of millions of dollars in assistance the Hollywood lawyer, a Democrat donor, has given Hunter Biden since the two met. The relationship is now under investigation by Congress. Most of Morris’ assistance is in the form of loans, according to a source close to Hunter Biden. Morris has also been a member of Hunter Biden’s legal team from time to time.
“It sure seems that the Bidens get a lot of loans that raise many questions,” House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer told Just the News. “Hunter Biden’s defense team was quick to say that the $250,000 wire he received from a Chinese national that listed Joe Biden’s home as the beneficiary address was a loan.
“However, Hunter Biden’s defense team fails to mention that Kevin Morris quietly assumed that loan for Hunter Biden,” Comer added. “Why is Kevin Morris, who is a lawyer and Democrat donor, taking on Hunter Biden’s China debt? This raises series ethical questions that the White House must answer.”
Hunter Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell did not respond to a request for comment from Just the News.
Li is a Chinese businessman who controlled a firm called Bohai Capital and partnered with Hunter Biden and Devon Archer in 2012 to form the joint company Bohai Harvest RST (BHR). BHR was controlled and primarily funded by Chinese state-owned entities, including the Bank of China, according to a Senate report released in 2020. Hunter Biden served on BHR’s board of directors and held a 10% stake in the company from 2017 onward, reportedly receiving no other compensation for his work.
In December 2013, Hunter Biden traveled to Beijing aboard Air Force Two with then-Vice President Joe Biden. The trip came shortly after Li, Archer, and Biden had signed a memorandum of understanding to form BHR. Hunter Biden later acknowledged that he introduced his father to Jonathan Li in the lobby of their Beijing hotel. Twelve days after the trip, BHR was registered in Beijing, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The loan to Hunter Biden came exactly three months after his father announced his presdential candidacy on April 25, 2019. During the campaign, Joe Biden would deny that his son was making money from China. In one instance, in the October 2020 presidential debate, Joe Biden claimed that his son “has not made money…in China,” despite emerging evidence to the contrary.
Earlier that month, Hunter Biden’s lawyer at the time, George Mesires, addressed Hunter’s role with the company. “Hunter neither played a role in the formation or licensure of the company, nor owned any equity in it while his father was Vice President,” he wrote in a post to Medium. “He served only as a member of its board of directors, which he joined based on his interest in seeking ways to bring Chinese capital to international markets. It was an unpaid position.”
However, Hunter Biden’s own records and emails, show he played a role in forming the company with his partner, Devon Archer, while his father was Vice President. Devon Archer and Hunter Biden spoke with Li about becoming partners in emails obtained from Hunter Biden’s laptop.
In April 2011, after Hunter Biden travelled to China with his associates to search for prospective partners, he was copied on an email from Jim Bulger at Thornton Group—one of Hunter Biden’s associates—to Li at Bohai discussing future business opportunities. In April 2013, Hunter Biden was copied on another email from the Chinese. “I just had a word with Jonathan. He confirmed that he had already instructed his lawyers to start drafting our fund cooperation for all the related parties/partners,” Michael Lin from Thornton wrote.
Sometime after Joe Biden’s announcement of his candidacy, ownership of Skaneateles, LLC—and the 10% stake in BHR along with it—was transferred from Hunter Biden to Morris. Another Hunter Biden lawyer, Chris Clark, told the New York Times in the fall of 2022 that the younger Biden “no longer holds any interest, directly or indirectly, in either BHR or Skaneateles.” After Kevin Morris’ acquisition of Skaneateles was complete, Hunter Biden’s debt to Jonathan Li for $250,000 was transferred, and he was no longer responsible for repayment of the loan, the FBI learned.
Morris, a successful Hollywood lawyer who worked on the first son’s legal team, was identified by the New York Times as the individual who paid off Hunter Biden’s overdue taxes in the form of loans. His association with and loans to the younger Biden were uncovered during IRS Whistleblower Gary Shapley’s testimony to Congress this summer.
“In late 2019-2020, a Kevin Patrick Morris comes into the picture. And he was described as meeting Hunter Biden at a campaign finance event. And he paid off several different tranches of tax due and owing, to include Federal and D.C. tax due and owing. And when they prepared some of these returns, they wrote that Kevin Patrick Morris gave him a loan for these. So that’s also not taxable,” Shapley told interviewers.
Kevin Morris did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Just the News.
This was not the only loan that Hunter Biden received from the Chinese. Just the News previously reported that another Chinese company set up a loan agreement with Hunter Biden for a $5 million, “interest-free” loan. The company in question, CEFC China Energy headed by Ye Jianming, intended the loan to be for the benefit of the Biden family. “This 5 million loan to BD family is interest-free,” an email obtained from Hunter Biden’s laptop read.
Hunter Biden’s one-time business partner Tony Bobulinski confirmed the loan arrangement in an interview he gave to the FBI, which was reviewed by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and addressed in an October 13, 2022 letter the senator sent to the Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss.
“According to the interview summary, the money transferred to Oneida as part of the venture to compensate the Bidens was supposed to consist of an unsecured $5 million loan, intended to be forgivable, from CEFC in 2017,” Grassley wrote.
Grassley also confirmed the transfer of the $5 million from Biden family bank records in his 2020 report with Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis. “On Aug. 8, 2017, CEFC Infrastructure Investment wired $5 million to the bank account for Hudson West III,” the report read. Grassley and Johnson connected this transfer to the $5 million promised by Hunter Biden’s CEFC business partners.
In his testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, IRS Whistleblower Joseph Ziegler described Hunter Biden’s habit of classifying payments from business partners, likely to avoid paying taxes.
“The money that he earned from Hudson West III, he tried to say that that was a loan,” Ziegler explained to the congressional investigators. “Same thing we have all going along back to Burisma — I’m loaning from my own capital in the company — even though he didn’t put any capital in the Hudson West III. It was zero. So he was trying to say that it was a loan. But the accountants were so good that they really dug into it, and they were like: No, no, no, you can’t deduct this — or you can’t take this as a loan on your tax return,” he continued.
That letter explains the role of an entity called Oneida “was made of five evenly divided LLCs, one for each business associate – including Hunter Biden and James Biden. 10 percent of Hunter Biden’s interest was to be held for Joe Biden.
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Investigative reporter Steven Richards joined Just the News in August 2023 after previously working as a Research Analyst for the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) in Tallahassee, Florida.
John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist, author and digital media entrepreneur who serves as Chief Executive Officer and Editor in Chief of Just the News. Before founding Just the News, Solomon played key reporting and executive roles at some of America’s most important journalism institutions, such as The Associated Press, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Newsweek, The Daily Beast and The Hill.
Photo “Hunter Biden” by Ben Stanfield. CC BY-SA 2.0.
