Over the course of a 50-minute press conference last Wednesday, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) and his colleagues detailed the flow of approximately $10 million from foreign nationals and companies in Romania, China, and other countries through a maze of up to 20 shell companies, into the accounts of nine members of the Biden family and several of Hunter Biden’s business associates. Some of the transactions occurred during Joe Biden’s vice presidency and others took place shortly after he had left office.
The shell companies, set up by Hunter Biden and his colleagues, had no discernible purpose other than to receive deposits and to later disburse those funds to Biden family member accounts.
There’s no question this activity was unusual. Why were foreigners making payments to the Biden family? What were they receiving in return? There was no ostensible business purpose for these transactions which is why they triggered over 170 Suspicious Activity Reports from the banks involved. As former U.S. Attorney Brett Tolman described it, “If you can’t identify what the business of those 25 LLCs are, then what you have is a shell game to move money.”
Simply put, the committee’s revelations were extraordinary. A sitting U.S. president is alleged to have participated in an influence peddling scheme. And Congressional investigators have pieced together the evidence to prove it. In a sane world, this would be a huge story.
But a funny thing happened. On Wednesday night, numerous networks, including ABC News, CBS News, and NBC News, ignored the story completely. Worse, other legacy media outlets reported Comer’s findings as proof that President Biden was not involved in the scheme because he was not named as one of the nine family members who had received funds. The headline in the New York Times read: “House Republican Report Finds No Evidence of Wrongdoing by President Biden.” Politico wrote: “Comer Releases Biden Family Probe Update Without Showing Link to President.” And Time reported: “Comer Investigation of Biden Relatives Swings and Misses on Allegations of Influence Peddling.” What?
The media’s conclusion that Biden was somehow exonerated because only his family members received payments is, of course, preposterous. Whose influence do they think foreigners were trying to buy? Hallie Biden’s? This is precisely how influence peddling schemes work. The parties who believed that Joe Biden was in a position to manipulate events in their favor paid his family members.
If they paid him directly, it “could be seen as a bribe,” according to George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley. He notes, “The whole purpose of influence peddling is to use family members as shields for corrupt officials. … The payments were going to his family, but he was the object of the influence peddling.”
Emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop show that Joe Biden benefited financially from the family business. Of course, we all remember the email showing the breakdown of the profits from the Biden family’s deal with Chinese energy company CEFC that showed 10% going to “the big guy.” Hunter Biden’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski famously told Tucker Carlson he is 1,000% sure “the big guy” is Joe Biden.
Moreover, in a January 2019 email to his daughter, Naomi Biden, Hunter wrote: “I hope you all can do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family for 30 years. It’s really hard. But don’t worry, unlike pop [a reference to Joe Biden], I won’t make you give me half your salary.”
A June 2010 email from Eric Schwerin, Hunter’s business partner at Rosemont Seneca, details a list of small bills that Hunter was paying on his father’s behalf.
Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute, has examined the money trail between Chinese-controlled companies and the Biden family. He literally wrote the book on these dealings. In a recent interview on Fox News, Schweizer said that Hunter also paid some very large bills for his father, including tens of thousands of dollars worth of home renovation expenses.
Schweizer detailed Hunter Biden’s relationships with three Chinese businessmen, all of whom “had direct, abiding, and deep ties to Chinese intelligence when they were arranging these deals for the Bidens.” According to Schweizer, they had “funneled tens of millions of dollars” to the Bidens.
Then Schweizer hit the nail on the head: “There’s no discernible service. They have still not explained what [the Bidens] actually got this money for — or what [they were] doing in return in terms of a legitimate business enterprise. So it begs the question of this being an intelligence operation.”
The media has chosen to cover this story in the same way they covered the New York Post’s bombshell news about Hunter Biden’s laptop in October 2020: by a combination of suppression and misleading.
In the meantime, solid evidence continues to mount. The question is, will Comer’s evidence matter if the media fails to report it accurately and if the DOJ and the FBI continue to stonewall Congressional subpoenas for documents and refuse to prosecute the players involved?
House Republicans must remain focused on their investigation and the conservative media must report their findings – relentlessly. It will ultimately be up to the American people to decide.
A previous version of this article appeared in The Washington Examiner.
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