Newly released documents show that Hunter Biden used his father’s appearance at a Sandy Hook memorial service to arrange a meeting between Joe Biden and Chinese business partners. The emails, part of a fresh tranche of documents released by Congress on Wednesday, were provided by IRS agents who investigated Hunter Biden.
On December 12, 2017, Hunter Biden used the Chinese messaging app WeChat to message Liu Yadong, a top executive at the Chinese oil giant CEFC, to arrange a meeting with his father. Hunter wrote, “Can you meet this evening early? My father will be in New York also and he wants me to attend the Sandy Hook 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.” Yadong responded, “No problem. Pls let me know where and when to meet.”
These texts to arrange a meeting with Joe Biden followed months of negotiations about the Biden family’s involvement in a deal with the Chinese government-linked company in exchange for $10 million a year. Liu Yadong was involved with CEFC’s sham charity, which was used by its chief Patrick Ho to funnel bribes to foreign officials. Ho was convicted of bribery in 2018.
In July 2017, Hunter Biden sent texts to CEFC official Runlong Zhao demanding that he follow through on the $10 million deal and noting his father’s involvement. “I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” Hunter wrote, according to messages obtained by IRS investigators and published by Congress last year. Weeks later, on August 3, 2017, Hunter texted CEFC associate Gongwen “Kevin” Dong, requesting a “$10 M per annum budget” and stating that “the Bidens are the best I know at doing exactly what the [CEFC] Chairman wants from this partnership.”
At the time, Joe Biden held no government position, having left the vice presidency the previous year. He would not be elected president until 2020.
The newly released documents also show that in November 2017, Hunter set up a group text conversation on the encrypted messaging app WhatsApp with his father and uncle, who was also a partner in his multi-million-dollar deal with CEFC. Hunter labeled one of the contacts in the three-person WhatsApp group as “Jim Biden” and the other as “Dad.”
Along with Yadong’s WeChat messages about setting up a meeting with Joe Biden, the House Ways and Means Committee published a photo of Yadong’s business card, which describes him as CEO of CEFC Global Strategic Holdings, located at the United Nations Plaza in New York City.
The messages obtained by IRS investigators Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler were new revelations, separate from texts published from Hunter’s abandoned laptop. According to an affidavit from Ziegler, these messages were obtained from a search warrant on Hunter’s iCloud account, meaning they come directly from his data stored by Apple, not from his abandoned laptop or another physical device.
The documents were given to the House Ways and Means Committee to challenge the truthfulness of Hunter Biden’s February congressional testimony. During this testimony, Hunter Biden was questioned about his 2017 texts to a CEFC official in which he demanded millions of dollars and said his father was sitting next to him and involved in the deal. Hunter dismissed these texts as drunk messages sent 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 claimed Wednesday. “In the message, Hunter Biden twice mentioned he was with his father. In the deposition, Hunter Biden sought to dismiss the message, claiming that he was either ‘high or drunk’ when he sent it, and in that state, had sent it to the wrong Zhao, and not actually the one affiliated with the Chinese energy company, CEFC.”
Smith added, “However, phone records in front of the Committee today show Hunter Biden sent the message to the correct Chinese businessman by the name of Raymond Zhao who not only was affiliated with CEFC but knew exactly what Hunter Biden was talking about.”