A Chinese company paid a Hunter Biden partner millions of dollars shortly after Joe Biden “stopped by” a 2017 lunch meeting involving business associates from China and the U.S., according to newly-released testimony.
Joe Biden briefly attended a 2017 private lunch meeting between Hunter Biden, Rob Walker and other business associates — including those from Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-linked energy firm CEFC — hosted at the Four Seasons hotel in Washington, D.C., Walker told the House Oversight and Accountability Committee on Jan. 26, according to a transcript of his testimony released Tuesday. A company connected to CEFC wired Walker’s LLC approximately $3 million not long after that meeting occurred, with a portion of those funds subsequently routed to members of the Biden family.
Walker characterized Joe Biden’s attendance as innocuous, brief and coincidental, asserting that no business matters were discussed in his presence, according to the transcript of his testimony. CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming, who has since disappeared, was at the lunch meeting, Walker said.
Walker Transcript by Nick Pope on Scribd
Once the CEFC-connected firm paid Walker the $3 million, he subsequently routed slightly more than $1 million to another business partner in a single transaction, he testified. However, Hunter Biden requested that Walker send him his cut of the payment in smaller installments, Walker said.
The meeting was meant to help Hunter Biden and his associates “[discuss] ways we could work together” with the Chinese businessmen because there was not yet a “structured deal” between the two sides, Walker testified. Hunter Biden had initiated his business relationship with CEFC while Joe Biden was still the vice president under former President Barack Obama, according to Walker’s testimony.
Early in 2016, Walker, Hunter Biden and another business associate collectively decided that it would be best to write to CEFC Director Jian Jun Zang about potential deals using Hunter Biden’s letterhead because doing so “would probably make more sense,” Walker testified.
In his opening statement, Walker asserted that he believes the serious allegations that Hunter and Joe Biden were involved in a massive influence-peddling scheme to be “unfounded.”
Tony Bobulinski, another former Hunter Biden business partner, expressed a much less forgiving view of the Biden family’s business interests in the opening statement he provided to lawmakers as he testified behind closed doors in Washington on Tuesday.
“The Chinese Communist Party through its surrogate, China Energy Company Limited, or ‘CEFC’ – a CCP-linked Chinese energy conglomerate – successfully sought to infiltrate and compromise Joe Biden and the Obama-Biden White House,” Bobulinski told lawmakers, according to a transcript of his opening statement. “Joe Biden was more than a participant in and beneficiary of his family’s business; he was an enabler, despite being buffered by a complex scheme to maintain plausible deniability.”
“Joe Biden was aware of the CEFC transaction, enabled it and had a constitutional responsibility and obligation to the American people to shut it down before it began,” he said.
The White House and the Biden campaign did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
Nick Pope on February 13, 2024
