‘The Biden Family Is a Syndicate’: Congressman Compares Influence-Peddling Scandal to Watergate
After combing through thousands of financial records linking a web of shell companies and foreign interests to the president’s family, a congressman has come to a conclusion: “The Biden family is a syndicate,” Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas) told “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” on Thursday.
“You could liken this to Watergate,” Fallon said. “The more we investigate, the more we find.”
Earlier in the day, the House Oversight Committee released a 36-page memorandum, its second on the Biden family’s bank records.
By the numbers, the committee reviewed thousands of records tracking $10 million sent to 21 different shell companies and received by at least nine members of the Biden family. What, if anything, the Biden family offered in return remains unclear.
“If you’re doing honest business one, first and foremost, we’ll know what your business offers — what service or product it provides. We still don’t know what Hunter Biden and the Biden family ever provided anyone,” Fallon, a member of the committee, told Perkins. “And then when you have payments to you, they’re made to your company, not to 20 different companies.”
The committee found that the Biden family and its close business associates had set up 21 limited liability companies (LLCs), all but two founded during Biden’s years as Barack Obama’s vice president.
A total of $10 million flowed through those LLCs, often with its source in such foreign nations as China, Ukraine, or Romania — nations then-Vice President Joe Biden oversaw for the Obama administration. The same funds would often pass between multiple LLCs in an attempt to disguise its foreign origin, the report says. In another attempt to cover their tracks, rather than receive a large check made out to the Bidens directly, “the Biden family received incremental payments over time to different bank accounts.” Many of the payments involve Hunter Biden’s D.C.-based professional corporation, Owasco P.C., the report notes.
Nine members of the Biden family benefited from these business deals, Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said at a press conference Thursday: Joe Biden’s son, Hunter; Hunter’s current wife, Melissa Cohen; Hunter Biden’s ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle; Hunter’s ex-girlfriend and Beau Biden’s widow, Hallie Biden; Joe Biden’s brother, James; James Biden’s wife, Sara; and three children of the president’s son and/or the president’s brother.
Scores of questionable transactions took place when Vice President Biden controlled the Obama administration’s policy portfolio for Eastern Europe and other regions of the world, including having a strong voice in China policy. The committee documented “170 suspicious activity reports that were generated by financial institutions, which they have to [issue] by law when they suspect fraud or money laundering,” Fallon explained.
“The Committee has uncovered evidence indicative of influence peddling and financial deception,” the report adds.
Among its new revelations, the memorandum includes fresh details of potential Biden family fraud involving Romanian businessman Gabriel Popoviciu. His Bladon Enterprises sent $3 million to Robinson Walker LLC, a company run by Hunter’s business partner Rob Walker, in the 18 months between November 2015 and May 2017. Walker transferred $1,038,627.08 to Hunter Biden, Beau Biden’s widow Hallie Biden, and an unnamed Biden family member.
“I think this is the tip of the iceberg,” Fallon told Perkins.
“We’ve only subpoenaed bank records for four of the 12 banks we believe the Biden family was involved with — and only through some of their known associates,” Fallon continued, adding, “We have not subpoenaed Joe or Hunter Biden’s bank records yet, because they’ll just lawyer up.” He believes the president’s immediate family’s primary “mission is to put this off until November of 2024,” after the next presidential election.
The FBI is currently stonewalling another piece of evidence that emerged during the 2020 presidential race: an interview that alleged that Joe Biden took bribes as a sitting vice president. Although the whistleblower disclosed the existence of the FBI report to the House Oversight Committee, the FBI has refused to turn over the report, form FD-1023, an unclassified informant report that was created or changed in June 2020.
“Right now, the biggest obstacle for me getting the facts is our own government, is the Department of Justice, is the FBI. And that’s unacceptable,” Comer has said. Fallon shared his frustration.
“I was really, really angry [Wednesday] when I found out that they refused to release it,” Fallon told Perkins. “If there’s nothing there, and it’s not credible, then release it. And if it’s highly credible, what have you been doing sitting on it for all this time?”
Bribery allegations could have nation-impacting repercussions, other Republican congressman have declared, including President Biden’s impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors. “You can’t prosecute a sitting president for crimes, so the only recourse — if this document exists, and we believe it does — is for the House to bring articles of impeachment,” Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.), a member of the House Oversight Committee, told The Daily Signal last Friday.
“Article II explicitly states that bribery is an impeachable offense,” tweeted Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
During a recent interview with Just The News, Comer multiplied the potential crimes his investigation suspects took place. “What about money laundering? Multiple banks in those violations implied that there was money laundering going on. What about racketeering? Racketeering is when you create shell companies and fake companies that serve no purpose other than to launder money,” he said.
If any Biden family member received a dollar from China, it would contradict Joe Biden’s statement to the American people during the second presidential debate in October 2020. “My son has not made money in terms of this thing about, what are you talking about, China,” Biden said, claiming that Donald Trump had actually benefited from nefarious financial deals with Beijing. “Nobody else has made money from China.”
New polls show that President Biden, whose popularity has been sliding throughout his presidency, has largely lost the corruption issue in the court of public opinion. A new Rasmussen report found that 69% of voters say the Biden influence-peddling case represents “a serious scandal,” including 72% of independents and 49% of Democrats. Similar margins believe that Biden engaged in a “pay-for-play” scheme as vice president, and that the proceeds benefited the entire Biden family.
The second bank records memorandum adds to the evidence presented in the first memo, released on March 16, as well as records obtained from Hunter Biden’s misplaced laptop disclosed by New York Post reporter Miranda Devine in her book “Laptop from Hell.”
The story has always been about The Big Guy, she said. “The laptop’s really not about Hunter Biden, even though it’s his laptop. Its value is in what it tells us about Joe Biden, Joe Biden’s corruption, and the history of it dating right back to his early days in Delaware,” Devine told this author in an exclusive interview shortly before the book launched.
“Hunter, who would have preferred to be an artist or a writer, was assigned the role of paying the bills for the rest of the family through lucrative grace-and-favor jobs and sweetheart deals facilitated by Joe’s network of connections in Delaware and, later, throughout the world,” wrote Devine in her book.
The Biden lifestyle required prodigious amounts of cash, which Hunter produced with the help of his father’s political ties, she said.
Hunter Biden famously netted $83,333 a month as an advisor for the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings Ltd., although he had no relevant expertise. Burisma cut his salary in half after Joe Biden left office as vice president, according to records on his laptop.
Hunter inked the first deal between his company, Bohai Harvest Rosemont (BHR), and China in 2013, as he accompanied his father on a trip to Beijing, a trip the elder Biden made in his capacity as vice president.
That equity deal proved slow in producing funds, so Hunter Biden engaged in a second deal with the China Energy Fund Committee (CEFC), which helped the Chinese Communist Party build its energy reserves. The Biden family earned millions, according to the laptop. Originally, this deal would be brokered through a company called Sinohawk. An email written on May 13, 2017, broke down the structure of Sinohawk’s ownership:
“The equity will be distributed as follows,” wrote [James] Gilliar, listing the shares in percentages.
“20 H [Hunter]
“20 RW [Rob Walker]
“20 JG [James Gilliar] “20 TB [Tony Bobulinski] “10 Jim [Biden] “10 held by H for the big guy.”
The Big Guy was then-Vice President Joe Biden, according to two of the people named in the email: Tony Bobulinski and James Gilliar.
Hunter Biden further described his role as the family’s financial underwriter in an email to his oldest daughter, Naomi, in 2019:
“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, I won’t make you give me half your salary.”
Other Biden family members openly signaled business deals with them would influence policy. “Don’t worry about investors,” James Biden reportedly told investors during a 2006 meeting for his hedge fund, Paradigm Global Advisors. “We’ve got people all around the world who want to invest in Joe Biden.”
James Biden had reportedly invoked his brother’s status to cement numerous deals in Delaware long before Biden’s eventual rise to the vice presidency and, ultimately, the presidency.
Similarly, another of President Biden’s brothers, Frank Biden, ran a series of casino and real estate deals in Costa Rica after his brother’s 2009 trip to the Central American nation, for which the vice president oversaw policy for the Obama administration.
James Biden reportedly told onetime business partner-turned-whistleblower Tony Bobulinski that the Biden family’s dubious deals have evaded scrutiny so long thanks to “plausible deniability.” But investigators believe they have denied the family any legal cover.
“Joe Biden is not the man he says he is,” Devine told this author. “He is deeply corrupt and a congenital liar.”
With eight more banks and numerous more Biden family members to investigate, a third memorandum — or formal charges — seem inevitable.
Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.