by Steven Richards and John Solomon
From emails and photos to sworn testimony and FBI documents, the House impeachment inquiry has meticulously established that Joe Biden met in person with many of his son’s large foreign clients, including Russian, Chinese and Ukrainian business executives.
That evidence mounts as lawmakers try to debunk the president’s claims he had nothing to do with his family’s business.
“Hunter Biden offered nothing of value to any of these foreign nationals. The only thing he had a value was his father, who was the sitting vice president of the United States and someone that they hope would be president someday,” House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer told the “Just the News, No Noise” television show Tuesday night after an explosive impeachment inquiry interview earlier in the day with former Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski.
Asked how many of the large foreign clients who paid Hunter Biden’s businesses millions did not meet with his father, Comer answered: “I haven’t found a single person.”
The president has quite loudly and definitively denied ever meeting with any of his son’s business partners. The Washington Post published a clip reel of Biden making the claim over and over. But the evidence continues to pile up that the claim simply isn’t true.
The latest Biden confidant to confirm the President met with Hunter’s foreign clients was Rob Walker. A friend who knew Hunter Biden since the 1990s, Walker testified unequivocally in an interview transcript released by Comer’s team on Tuesday that Joe Biden met with a delegation of officials from the Chinese energy company CEFC, including its Chairman Ye Jianming, at a lunch in Washington, D.C. shortly after leaving office.
That hotel meeting occurred just days before CEFC made its first payment totaling $3 million to a Hunter Biden-tied company, the transcript showed.
Walker’s testimony – and the fact that the president did indeed meet often with his son’s business partners and clients – is bolstered by an FBI interview with presidential brother James Biden and congressional testimony by former Hunter Biden associate Devon Archer that confirmed similar meetings between the future president and the family’s business associates.
To date, congressional investigators have confirmed that Joe Biden met with the following foreign associates alongside his son between 2013 and 2017:
- Ye Jianming, Chairman of CEFC China Energy
- Jonathan Li, another Chinese businessman and a principal of Bohai Capital who created a joint venture with Hunter Biden.
- Vadim Pozharskyi, an executive of the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings who paid Hunter Biden and Archer millions to serve on its board.
- Yelena Baturina, a Russian oligarch and real estate investor who paid millions to a firm associated with Hunter Biden’s partners.
- Kenes Rakishev & Karim Massimov, a Kazakhstani oligarch and former prime minster, respectively.
Comer said Thursday, though not a foreigner, Bobulinski also testified he met with Joe Biden as the top executive of a company called Sinohawk that was partnering in the deal with CEFC.
“Bobulinski confirmed that he met with Joe Biden on more than one occasion and discussed business,” Comer said. “Joe Biden knew he was going in business with with Hunter and with Jim Biden, and he knew that the business was selling the Biden brand. Tony Bobulinski said under oath today that the business the Bidens were engaged in was selling the Biden brand. They were influence peddling.”
Comer said the conflict between the testimony of family friends and associates and the president’s own claims has grown so large that it has become a major focus of impeachment. “Remember, he said numerous times he never met with any of them. He’s even said he didn’t even know that Hunter was on the board of Burisma for a long time. I mean, lie after lie after lie,” he said.
Here is a breakdown of each major interaction between Joe Biden and a foreign business associate of Hunter Biden’s, according to the evidence made public by the House impeachment inquiry.
Chairman Ye Jianming
Ye Jianming was the Chairman and founder of CEFC China Energy, an energy conglomerate with close ties to the Chinese Communist Party that sought investment deals across the world, from the heart of Europe to the Middle East. CEFC partnered with Hunter Biden and his associates to use the influence of his name to facilitate investment deals abroad and in the United States, according to testimony by Hunter Biden’s associate and friend Rob Walker.
The early contours of the deal between Hunter and his business partners and CEFC began to take shape in early 2016. In March of that year, Hunter Biden and his partners sent a letter to CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming expressing their anticipation to work together on opportunities in the U.S. and abroad. The memo boasted Hunter Biden’s letterhead, according to the document, recently published by the House Oversight Committee.
By February 2017, weeks after Joe Biden left the vice presidency, CEFC Chairman Ye and the American business partners met in Miami to hammer out the deal—a joint venture between the Chinese energy company and a company formed by Hunter Biden and his associates. But, the first payments to the enterprise would not come until after Joe Biden met Chairman Ye.
Later that year, in early 2017, Hunter Biden and his business associates met with a CEFC delegation, including its Chairman Ye Jianming, at a lunch in Washington, D.C. According to testimony that Rob Walker gave to the House Oversight Committee, Joe Biden joined his son and the delegation of CEFC officials at the lunch and spoke to the assembled group.
According to Walker’s testimony, shortly after that lunch where Ye Jianming met the former vice president, a CEFC affiliate wired $3 million to Walker’s company, Robinson Walker LLC, the first transfer in the deal between the Chinese energy company and Hunter Biden’s group.
Jonathan Li
A similar pattern is found in an earlier venture with a Chinese businessman, Jonathan Li, who joined with Hunter Biden and his associates in forming BHR Partners, a private equity firm that was backed by several Chinese state owned enterprises, including the Bank of China.
In November 2013, Jonathan Li and Hunter Biden—who was partnered with Devon Archer, another business associate who testified in the impeachment inquiry—signed a memorandum of understanding to create the proposed joint venture. The following month, in December 2013, Hunter Biden flew to Beijing aboard Air Force Two with his father during an official government trip.
During the trip to China, Hunter Biden arranged a meeting between Joe Biden and Jonathan Li in the lobby of their hotel. “How do I go to Beijing, halfway around the world, and not see them for a cup of coffee?” Biden told The New Yorker magazine. Twelve days after the visit, BHR Partners was officially registered in China.
Hunter Biden’s lawyer insisted that his board position was unpaid and that Biden never received compensation for his original investment in the company. Hunter Biden’s friend and lawyer, Kevin Morris, who loaned the first son millions in the lead up to the 2020 presidential election, purchased Biden’s stake in BHR, according to documents gathered by law enforcement and reviewed by Just the News.
Vadim Pozharskyi
In April 2015, Hunter Biden hosted a dinner at the Cafe Milano in Washington, D.C. which was attended by several of his business partners, including Vadim Pozharskyi, an executive at Burisma Holdings. The younger Biden had joined the board of Burisma about one year earlier, according to a report from The New York Times.
According to sworn testimony from Devon Archer and evidence from Hunter Biden’s infamous abandoned laptop, Joe Biden attended this dinner meeting. Shortly after the meeting, Pozharskyi went as far as sending a “thank you” note to Hunter for the opportunity to meet his father.
Later that year, in December 2015, Vadim Pozharskyi and Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner and founder of Burisma, requested Hunter Biden call his father when pressure against the company by the Ukrainian government was ramping up. This request came amidst an escalating probe by the country’s then-prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, according to Devon Archer’s testimony.
Days after the requested phone call, Vice President Biden arrived in Kyiv for a visit with the country’s senior leadership and ignoring his own State Department’s recommendations, “called an audible” and demanded Shokin’s firing in exchange for a $1 billion loan guarantee from the United States.
Yelena Baturina
In early April 2014, Yelena Baturina, a real estate investor and the widow of a former Moscow mayor, deposited $3.5 million into a bank account tied to a Hunter Biden business. The payment was made to facilitate a real estate deal in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City.
Weeks later, Hunter Biden hosted a dinner at the same Washington, D.C. restaurant and invited Yelena Baturina, who attended, according to Devon Archer’s testimony. Archer also told the Oversight Committee that then-Vice President Biden was also in attendance. Baturina has conspicuously been able to avoid sanctions by the U.S. government against Russian oligarchs, most recently from the Biden Administration.
Kenes Rakishev & Karim Massimov
Two more associates of Hunter Biden attended the 2014 dinner at Cafe Milano, a Kazakhstani oligarch named Kenes Rakishev and the country’s former prime minister, Karim Massimov.
Between 2012 and 2014, Hunter Biden attempted to help Rakishev secure investment opportunities in the United States—in New York, Washington, D.C. and in Nevada—according to the New York Post.
In the same month that Rakishev dined with then-Vice President Biden, he later wired $142,300 to an entity connected to Hunter Biden. The following day, the same amount was wired to a New Jersey car dealership to pay for a Porsche sports car for Hunter Biden, according to bank records obtained by the Oversight Committee.
The former prime minister of Kazakhstan Karim Massimov was also present at the 2014 dinner meeting with the vice president. The following year, in 2015, Massimov also attended a meeting at the vice presidential residence—the Naval Observatory—with Hunter Biden, Devon Archer, and Marc Holtzman, who was the top official at the largest bank in Kazakhstan.
The object of the meeting, according to Archer, was to advocate for Massimov to become the United Nations Secretary General, the top official at the international body. Archer explained that he and Hunter Biden were also interesting in securing Massimov’s assistance to facilitate an energy deal for Burisma in Kazakhstan at the time.
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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. He is a two-time graduate of Florida State University with a Masters in Political Science and a B.S. in International Affairs. 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.
Photo “Hunter and Joe Biden” by Louise Palanker. CC BY-SA 2.0.
