Hunter Biden used his dad’s appearance at a Sandy Hook shooting memorial event to coordinate a previously unknown planned meeting between the former vice president and a Chinese business partner, newly unveiled texts showed.
On Dec. 12, 2017, Hunter messaged CEFC executive Liu Yadong on WeChat to arrange a meeting with his powerful dad, documents released this week by the House Ways and Means Committee revealed.
“Can you meet this evening early,” Hunter wrote in the messages obtained by IRS investigators.
“My father will be in New York also and he wants me to attend the Sandyhook [sic] memorial service with him and I would like him to meet you along with my uncle [Jim Biden] and then you and I can talk let me know if that works.”
“No problem,” Liu replied. “Pls let me know where and when to meet.”
Joe Biden was later pictured at the Plaza Hotel for the event commemorating five years since the deadly Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
It was not immediately clear if Biden and Liu actually met that night.
Despite repeatedly insisting his family earned no money from China, the president featured prominently in first son Hunter and first bother James Biden’s multimillion-dollar relationship with CEFC, with most of his known alleged interactions happening in 2017 shortly after he left office as vice president.
Joe Biden played a similar supporting role in Hunter’s dealings with Chinese state-backed fund BHR Partners, which was registered just days after the father-son duo landed in Beijing aboard Air Force Two in 2013.
The newly revealed texts between Hunter Biden and Liu came after several months of back-and-forth over the Biden clan’s involvement in a deal with CEFC – which has ties to the Chinese government – in exchange for a cool $10 million per year.
That May, one of the family’s partners, James Gilliar, penciled in a 10% cut for the “big guy” as part of a joint venture with CEFC. Multiple former Biden family associates say the term refers to Joe Biden, including Tony Bobulinski, who says he had two conversations with Joe Biden that month.
In July 2017, Hunter Biden sent a stony message to CEFC official Runlong Zhao demanding an update on the project — and pointing out his dad’s involvement — as the powerful US political family moved to cut out its other non-Chinese partners from the cash flow.
“I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” Hunter shot off.
Within 10 days of Hunter’s threatening July text message invoking his dad, CEFC wired $5.1 million to accounts linked to Hunter and his uncle James.
The future president’s brother in turn sent $40,000 of the haul to Joe Biden as part of an alleged loan repayment, James Biden admitted this February.
In August 2017, Hunter boasted to another CEFC associate that his well-connected family was “the best I know at doing exactly what the [CEFC] Chairman wants from this partnership.”
Joe Biden also was name-checked in an October 2017 email about helping CEFC purchase US natural gas. The communication named him as a participant in an upcoming call on the topic.
The messages published this week as part of a flurry of unsealed documents also included photos of Liu Yadonog’s business card, which listed him as CEO of CEFC Global Strategic Holdings.
The messages were obtained when IRS investigators Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler obtained a search warrant for Hunter Biden’s iCloud account – meaning that they were stored separately from the messages extracted from his abandoned laptop, Ziegler wrote in an affidavit.
The stack of damning documents was turned over to the House Ways and Means Committee as evidence that Hunter may have been lying when he testified before Congress in February.
At the time, Hunter claimed that the threatening message to Runlong Zhao was part of a string of drunk texts to the wrong person.
“Hunter Biden lied about the recipient of a WhatsApp message sent with the apparent intention to threaten a business associate and demand payment,” committee chairman Jason Smith alleged on Wednesday.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.