Hunter Biden’s Chinese legal ‘client’ threatens to sue unless first son pays back $1 m

 Hunter Biden was paid $1 million by Chinese firm CEFC to act as attorney for their employee, Dr Patrick Ho, but now Ho is threatening to sue the first son within seven days unless he gets the money back — because he claims Hunter did no legal work for him.

Ho sent a legal letter to Hunter last week requesting that their attorney-client agreement be terminated immediately and threatening legal action unless he receives a detailed list of services provided by Hunter and reimbursement for the unused funds, as laid out in the 2017 contract. 

Ho’s letter, sent by Hong Kong law firm Huen & Partners to Hunter’s attorney Abbe Lowell in Washington, DC, set a deadline of seven days for the repayment of any remaining funds.

“Patrick says he paid him, and that Hunter never did anything for him,” a friend of Ho’s told The Post, “and that according to the contract the money should be reimbursed.”

The $1 million legal retainer was wired from CEFC in China to CEFC’s Hong Kong HSBC account, and then, on November 2, 2017, to the American bank account of Hudson West III (HWIII) the firm Hunter co-owned with CEFC, and then to Hunter’s private firm, Owasco, according to his California tax indictment. 

Ho was arrested in New York on November 18, 2017, as he got off a plane from Hong Kong. 

The former Hong Kong Home Affairs secretary was convicted in 2019 for paying bribes to the presidents of Chad and Uganda. He was sentenced to three years’ jail before being deported to Hong Kong. 

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Ho claims that Hunter Biden did no legal work for him.AP

According to Ho, Hunter, 54, pocketed the $1 million but did no legal work for him, other than call another attorney, Edward Kim, and turn up half an hour late for a meeting with Ho and Kim at the Manhattan Correctional Center the morning after Ho’s arrest.

Hunter didn’t visit Ho, 74, even once in jail, Ho has told friends bitterly.

Hunter’s name does not appear as an attorney on record for the Patrick Ho case in the Southern District of New York. 

Under oath, Hunter told Delaware district judge Maryellen Noreika, during his failed plea hearing of July 26, 2023, that he received the million dollar payment as “payment for legal fees for Patrick Ho,” through “my own law firm”. 

Noreika wanted more detail: “Who is that payment received from, was that the law firm?”

Hunter: “Received from Patrick Ho, Your Honor.”

Noreika: “Mr. Ho himself?”

Hunter: “Yes.”

Noreika: “Were you doing legal work for him and apart from the law firm?”

Hunter: “Yes, Your Honor. Well –.”

Sniffing danger, Hunter’s lawyer Chris Clark stepped in at this point: “That wasn’t through Boise Schiller, Your Honor, Mr. Biden was engaged as an attorney.”

Noreika: “Right. So that’s why I asked. You were doing work for him –.”

Hunter: “My own law firm, not as counsel.”

Noreika: “So you had your own law firm as well?”

Hunter: “I think Owasco PT acted as a — acted as a law firm entity, yeah.”

Noreika: “Okay.”

Hunter: “I believe that’s the case, but I don’t know that for a fact.”

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Ho sent a legal letter to Hunter last week requesting that their attorney-client agreement be terminated immediately and threatening legal action unless he receives a detailed list of services provided by Hunter.Getty Images

Ho, who has been keeping a close eye on Hunter’s travails from Hong Kong, according to his friend, was “baffled” by Hunter’s responses to Noreika. He was stuck with a massive legal bill for Kim’s representation, which he had to pay out of his own pocket. 

A copy of the attorney engagement agreement that Hunter signed on September 18, 2017, was on his abandoned laptop, and also was obtained by IRS investigator Joe Ziegler from an electronic email search warrant to Google.

Ziegler testified to the House Ways and Means Committee last year that, “The evidence … indicates that this $1 million payment was not for legal fees and was misrepresented by the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office in the statement of facts, and that its ultimate purpose was still under investigation by DOJ.”

Ho’s letter was sent days after the president’s brother Jim Biden testified to the impeachment inquiry about telling the FBI that CEFC chairman Ye Jianming was a “protege” of China’s President Xi Jinping, a statement that was not welcomed in Beijing, according to Ho’s friend, who said Xi and Ye have “no relations.” 

Ye was arrested in China in February 2018 under the direct orders of President Xi, according to Chinese news agency Caixin. He has not been heard from since.

Hong Kong has been a Special Administrative Region of China since 1997 and is subject to increasing control from Beijing. 

CEFC paid Hunter a total of $7.2 million between March 2017 and March 2018. Chairman Ye also gave Hunter a 3.16-carat diamond in February 2017, along with a grading report that listed it as a “round brilliant” of Grade F with prime “VS2” clarity and “excellent” cut, putting its estimated value at $80,000, which also was the price claimed by the divorce attorney for Hunter’s ex-wife Kathleen. Photographs of the stunning stone and grading report appear on Hunter’s laptop.

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CEFC paid Hunter a total of $7.2 million between March 2017 and March 2018.AP

Hunter testified to the impeachment inquiry last week that he gave the diamond to his uncle, Jim Biden. Jim testified that he “threw it in the trash.” Jim also testified that there was another diamond or diamond “ring” given to Hunter in 2015 or 2016 on behalf of CEFC by a fellow father of a student at exclusive Sidwell Friends school in Washington.

The Ho-Hunter attorney engagement agreement stipulated: “Attorney will perform the legal services called for under this agreement, keep Client informed of progress and developments, and respond promptly to Client’s inquiries and communications.” 

Legal services included: “conferences, court sessions, depositions preparation and participation; correspondence and legal documents review and preparation; legal research; and telephone conversations . . .

“If at the conclusion of this agreement, the total amount of Attorney fees and costs is less than that of the retainer sum, the remaining amount will be reimbursed to the client.”

Ho’s letter was emailed by CEFC’s Mervyn Yan to Hunter, Jim Biden and Jim’s wife Sara on October 10, 2017, Ziegler testified. Jim testified that he “didn’t know” if Hunter was representing Ho.

Ho headed up CEFC’s nonprofit arm, a think tank also called CEFC, which was granted “special consultative status” by the United Nations. 

https://nypost.com/2024/03/03/opinion/hunter-bidens-chinese-legal-client-threatens-to-sue-unless-first-son-pays-back-1-million/

Students at most violent US high school organizing fight clubs while teachers look the other way

 Students at one of America’s most violent high schools — where administrators begged for the National Guard to help reign in campus chaos — are organizing fight clubs, The Post has learned.

Meanwhile, overwhelmed teachers at Brockton High School, 25 miles south of Boston, are turning a blind eye to the violence out of fear for their own safety after multiple staffers were brutally beaten while trying to stop fights.

“Out of boredom the kids are setting up fights between two individuals, and they’re setting up a location for them to fight, and everybody’s going to watch it,” said Jamal Gooding, a Brockton, Mass., activist who has been speaking with parents and students since the beleaguered school made headlines earlier in February.

Gooding told The Post that those fights are sparking even more violence in the hallways — and risk turning deadly.

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One of the many fights at Brockton High School that was caught on camera and posted to social media.boston25news

“What happens when you lose the fight and you go to school next day? That’s when you let your friends come in the back door and get the person that beat you up,” he said.

“They’re not dealing with fisticuff fights, like we did in our generation. No, if you lose, now you want to go to weapons.”

Cliff Canavan, a Brockton High math teacher of 22 years, hadn’t heard about fight clubs, but told The Post “it wouldn’t necessarily surprise me” if they were happening, as brawls are commonplace in the halls of the school.

Canavan, who had his arm broken last school year while stopping a beat-down in which an unconscious student was being kicked in the head, said the violence has become so aggressive that he and many of his colleagues have stopped trying to intervene for their own safety.

“If I’m in the hallway and a fight breaks out, I’m not getting involved. I’m turning around and walking the other way. Because I’m not going to put myself in a position to get seriously injured again,” he said.

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Cliff Canavan has worked as a math teacher at Brockton High for 22 years. He says most of his students are amazing.Boston Globe via Getty Images

Canavan’s injuries were just one in a long list Brockton teachers have suffered — and relatively minor compared to some attacks on faculty.

“A friend of mine that was a science teacher… he had a fight break out in front of his classroom several years back. And he got knocked to the ground and hit his head so hard that he actually wound up with internal damage in his brain area,” Canavan said.

“He will never be able to work again as a teacher. He’ll never be to, as far as I know, never drive a car again. He walks around with those deep, deep tinted sunglasses that like a you see an elderly person wearing, because if he doesn’t he winds up with splitting headaches from regular light. That’s horrific.”

Another teacher ruptured three disks in his back when he was knocked over breaking up a fight, and was put out of work for the entire year, Canavan said.

And, a hall proctor who was seven months pregnant was shoved into a wall by a student she was escorting for discipline.

“He turned to her and shoved her up against the wall, slammed her in the wall. After she went out on maternity leave she didn’t return to Brockton,” the teacher added.

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Canavan’s arm was broken while trying to break up a fight at Brockton High School in December 2022.Courtesy of Clifford Canavan

During an emergency school committee meeting in February, Canavan and a number of other teachers described the chaos they face on a daily basis trying to wrestle control over the 3,500 students who roam the halls of Brockton High.

They reported witnessing students getting into fights, dealing and doing drugs, and according to one teacher, “having sex” in empty classrooms.

Recent budget shortfalls and layoffs — about 120 district teachers were fired last year, according to Canavan — have left the school severely understaffed. Those who remain are powerless to maintain order, he said.

In a desperate measure, four members of the Brockton School Committee officially asked Brockton’s mayor and Gov. Maura Healey to dispatch troops from the National Guard to help quell the trouble.

Healey declined to send the Guard, instead allocating funds for a safety audit, but Canavan said the move was incredibly effective in making people look at the problem.

“When I first had my arm broken, I was so frustrated by the situation and not getting the support that I needed that I sent pictures and a description of what happened to a variety of local news agencies,” Canavan said. “And I didn’t even get a single call or email. And now all of a sudden everybody wants to talk to me.”

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Brockton activist Jamal Gooding has offered to send in 50 volunteers from his nonprofit to help staff at Brockton High.nbcboston

Effective as it might have been in drawing attention, Canavan called involving the National Guard “foolish” and a “short term solution,” citing a 2012 Massachusetts school discipline law — Chapter 222 — that he said started the trouble, and would prevent the Guard from taking any real action.

Chapter 222 requires that suspensions be used only as a “last resort” in disciplining students. Critics say it forces teachers and administrators to go through arduous bureaucratic steps before they can effect meaningful discipline.

“It handcuffs or hamstrings the administration’s ability to effectively discipline students,” Canavan said. “It’s gotten to the point now where the worst behaved kids are feeling more enabled than anything else. Because the consequences, they don’t feel, are effective.”

Gooding, the Brockton activist, is a born and raised Bostonian who grew up in the shadow of the state-sanctioned desegregation of the city’s public school system in the 1970s and the violence that ensued. He also agreed that the National Guard was not the answer — especially in one of the most diverse cities in New England.

Brockton High School’s student body is 61% black, 18% Hispanic and 13% white.

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Parents, teachers, lawmakers, and community members have been divided since the committee asked for the Guard.Mark Jarret Chavous/The Enterprise / USA TODAY NETWORK

“There’s a lot of distrust within the community, with anybody with a gun,” Gooding said, referring to both police and members of the Guard.

“One of the things we’re hearing from these young adults right now is psychological trauma that they’re going through daily,” he said.

During a city meeting on Tuesday, Gooding offered to send 50 volunteers from his non-profit, People Affecting Community Change, to help with the situation instead of outside forces like the National Guard. Gooding said bringing in people from the community will be vital in solving the real problems causing the trouble at Brockton High. He still has not heard back on the offer.

Canavan, meanwhile, believes the solution is for the school to push back on Chapter 222, and to ban phones during the school day — which he believes have helped students to stoke violence and organize retaliation on social media.

Despite the grisly headlines surrounding Brockton High, Canavan and Gooding both emphasized that the great majority of students are not the problem.

“The negativity that’s been happening around Brockton should not overshadow the huge success we have with a lot of those students, and producing some great graduates that go off to college, or trade school,” Canavan said, noting that 95% of the students are “great kids that do the right thing on a regular basis.”

“We’re trying to do what’s right for them, because they deserve it.”

But while the troubles go unresolved, more and more of those good kids are continuing to leave the school every year. Brockton high typically has an enrollment of about 4,300 students, Canavan said, but in his 22 years at the school the student body has reached an all time low.

“A good portion of that is because of parents choosing to send their kids to districts near Brockton, but not in Brockton. Because they don’t trust having their children at the high school,” the teacher said.

https://nypost.com/2024/03/03/us-news/brockton-high-students-organize-fight-clubs-at-mass-school/

Israel Unveils New West Bank Settlement Expansion In Defiance Of White House

 Via The Libertarian Institute

Israel approved the building of 3,600 Israeli homes in a new West Bank settlement. The announcement came just days after Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared the settlements were inconsistent with international law. Tel Aviv routinely ignores Washington’s requests to curtail its oppressive treatment of Palestinians without an impact on the billions in aid the US provides to Israel each year. 

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich approved the new Jewish homes on Palestinian land south of Jerusalem on Tuesday. "We will continue the momentum of settlement throughout the country," he said. Smotrich has denied the existence of the Palestinian people and called for the segregation of maternity wards. 

The approval of the settlement is a snub to the White House, as last week Blinken reinstated a pre-Donald Trump policy of viewing Israeli settlements in the West Bank as inconsistent with international law.

"Our administration maintains a firm opposition to settlement expansion, and in our judgment this only weakens, doesn’t strengthen Israel’s security," the diplomat said.

Blinken added that the settlements were "inconsistent with international law" and "counterproductive to reaching enduring peace."

In addition to building new Jewish homes, Tel Aviv has also been destroying Palestinian homes. Israel has destroyed nearly 100 Palestinian homes since October 7—Tel Aviv bills Palestinians for the cost of destroying their homes. 

Last week, Smotrich explained the policy was to punish the Palestinians, "Our enemies should know that any harm to us will lead to more construction and more development and more of our hold all over the country." Collective punishment, settlement building, and military occupation are all violations of international law. 

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, source: Jerusalem Post

President Joe Biden, who claims his foreign policy is centered on respect for the liberal international order, has still refused to curtail US support for Israel or even condemn Tel Aviv's alleged many flagrant violations of humanitarian law amid growing international pressure. Secretary of State Lloyd Austin recently told Congress that the US has shipped Israel over 20,000 bombs since October 7. 

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/israel-unveils-new-west-bank-settlement-expansion-defiance-white-house