Joe Biden was aware that his brother Jim and his son Hunter were using his name to move forward acquisition deals in the interests of the Chinese company CEFC even though he was still US vice president, an upcoming book by New York Post columnist Miranda Devine claims.
Relying on documents extracted from the laptop, which purportedly belonged to Hunter Biden, and US investor Tony Bobulinski's account of events, Devine describes one episode that allegedly shows that Joe Biden was aware of his son's business dealings abroad, despite repeatedly claiming otherwise.
'High Level' Meeting
According to Devine's book "Laptop From Hell", Tony Bobulinski was tapped by Hunter Biden and his confidant and friend of the family, Rob Walker, to work out the structure of a future joint venture with the Chinese energy giant CEFC. The latter's chair, Ye Jianming, was seeking to make acquisitions around the world to promote China's Road and Belt initiative, and needed a prominent name to negotiate them, the book claims. Ye Jianming reportedly chose the Biden family for this purpose.
In May 2017, Hunter and Jim Biden invited Bobulinski to Los Angeles to meet with Joe Biden and discuss the joint venture with the CEFC, the book claims. The four met in the lobby bar at the Beverly Hilton, where Joe Biden arrived after giving a speech at the Milken Institute Global Conference, Devine claims. Hunter Biden reportedly told Bobulinski that the meeting was needed to acquaint him with Joe, while Jim stressed that the sit-down was strictly "high level", meaning no details would be discussed.
"We will not go into any detail about the business. I just want my dad to be comfortable with you", Hunter told the investor.
After Joe Biden showed up, he and Bobulinski shook hands and the investor had the chance to present his resume, the book says. Biden then reportedly thanked Bobulinski for "helping [his] son" and the 45-minute meeting was over. Bobulinski claims that it was obvious from the meeting that despite Hunter and Jim organising the deal with the CEFC, Joe Biden was "the final decision-maker".
"Great to meet u and spend some time together, please thank Joe for his time was great to talk thx", the investor texted Jim Biden via WhatsApp after the meeting with Joe, records obtained by the NYP columnist claim.
How to Get Away With Abuse of Power
The day after the meeting with Joe Biden, Bobulinski met again with Hunter and Jim, who filled him in on the details of their efforts over the past two years: they used the influential name of the then-US vice president to advance the CEFC deals and the Belt and Road agenda across the world, the book claims. The fact that all this was done while Joe Biden still held office at the White House could not but surprise Bobulinski:
"How are you guys getting away with this? Aren’t you concerned that you’re going to put your brother’s [2020] presidential campaign at risk? You know, the Chinese, the stuff that you guys have been doing already in 2015 and 2016, around the world?"
Jim Biden, however, reportedly calmed the investor down, saying that they could get away with this via "plausible deniability" – a concept concocted by the CIA in the 20th century that allowed the agency to keep the US president in the dark about its nastiest operations, thus allowing POTUS to deny knowledge of them.
Bobulinski believes that this was the reason why the meeting with Joe Biden was strictly on "high level" – to keep him out of the loop on most of the details, while getting his general permission to proceed with an operation he allegedly knew about. Even in the case of "plausible deniability", the investor's account of events puts Biden's claims of never discussing business with his son into question.
"I’ve seen firsthand that that’s not true, because it wasn’t just Hunter’s business. They said they were putting the Biden family name and its legacy on the line. The Biden family aggressively leveraged the Biden family name to make millions of dollars from foreign entities even though some were from communist-controlled China", Bobulinski said in October 2020, when he first revealed that a deal had taken place between the Bidens and the Chinese company.
The investor recalls the Bidens being "paranoid" about keeping Joe's knowledge of the details of their dealings to a minimum, even though they would occasionally let their guard down, the book says.
Several weeks after the meetings with the Bidens, Bobulinski helped them incorporate SinoHawk Holdings LLC – a joint venture in which CEFC had a 50% stake via the Delaware-based Hudson West IV LLC. The rest was owned by Oneida Holdings LLC, also set up by Tony Bobulinski.
22 October 2020, 09:23 GMT
According to emails extracted from the laptop, which allegedly belonged to Hunter Biden, the ownership of Oneida was almost evenly distributed between other partners in the deal. Among them were Hunter Biden, what appears to be Rob Walker, James Gilliar (linked to Ye Jianming), as well as Bobulinski, who held 20% each. An additional 10% was given to Jim Biden, and 10% more to another enigmatic person, who was only designated in one of the emails as "the big guy" (but it was held by Hunter Biden).
Bobulinski believes that the "big guy" refers to Joe Biden, the book says. Some of the other extracted emails and messages from "Hunter's laptop" did indeed refer to Joe Biden as the "big guy".
"Hunter Biden called his dad 'the Big Guy' or 'my Chairman', and frequently referenced asking him for his sign-off or advice on various potential deals that we were discussing".
The first evidence indicating that the Bidens were involved in questionable business deals with the Chinese energy giant emerged in 2020, not long prior to the presidential election. It was extracted from the laptop, which had been dropped off at a Delaware repair shop but never collected. The shop's owner identified Hunter Biden as the person who had dropped off the device, and having seen the files he extracted from the laptop's drive, decided to hand them over. He sent one copy to the FBI and another to Donald Trump's attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who eventually sent them to press.
Biden, however, continued to deny involvement in his son's foreign business affairs and insisted that he had never even discussed them.