The consistency of conservative political pundits is their failure of any loyalty to their own stated positions. When the time comes they will even turn on tRump. They are only loyal to their own selfish, self-centered view of the moment that they see as helping their own selves.
After scanning this thread, I have a proposal: For the sake of argument, let’s deem Trump to have been an aberration in the American body politic. What does it say about our jurisprudence when Hillary skates (with the connivence of Comey’s FBI in declaring her sins non-prosecutable), when she had been briefed on her responsibilities vis a vis classified materials? BTW, the decision to prosecute or not in the FBI’s purview, it’s in the judiciary. Sorry about the “But she did …” defense. But let’s unseal the indictments, shall we?
a diversion from the truth of the Biden Cabal’s treason:
Hunter Biden texted a Chinese business executive bragging about his ability to serve his client, the House Oversight Committee revealed Tuesday afternoon.Biden apparently boasted on Aug. 3, 2017, to Gongwen Dong, an executive at CEFC, an energy firm linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), about how his family is “the best” at doing what Dong’s bosses want.“The Biden’s are the best I know at doing exactly what the Chairman wants from this [partnership],” Hunter Biden texted, according to the House Oversight Committee.
The following day, one of Biden’s shell companies was paid $100,000 from CEFC, the committee discovered.
“I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight,” Hunter Biden allegedly wrote. “And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”The White House said “the President was not in business with his son” in response to the IRS whistleblower testimony. Hunter Biden’s lawyer said his client’s words are “solely his own and have no connection to anyone in his family.”Testimony by a separate IRS whistleblower accused Biden of moving payments from Ukrainian energy firm Burisma to a Chinese firm to avoid paying taxes.House Oversight released a memo in May detailing how the Biden family allegedly attempted to hide more than $10 million in foreign payments.Dong allegedly tried to hide his $100,000 payment to Biden by creating a limited liability company (LLC), CEFC Infrastructure, with its “sole equity member” being another one of his LLCs.
Dong’s LLC transferred its stake in CEFC Infrastructure to Shanghai Huaxin Group, which put $10 million into the account of CEFC Infrastructure. The firm later wired $100,000 to Hunter Biden’s LLC, Owasco P.C, according to House Oversight.
In March, House Oversight revealed how a CCP-linked firm paid $3 million to Biden family associate John Robinson Walker who sent the money to Biden family members afterwards.
“For months and months, both the president and, on his behalf, spokespeople, have been saying the president did not have business communications with his son Hunter Biden,” Issa said. “It switched just a couple of days ago now—it switched to he was ‘never in business’ with his son.”
“Huge difference,” Issa continued.
“What we can take from the change is that it is no longer considered to be true that he did not have communications with his son,” Issa said, pointing to recent reporting of emails, messages, and alleged conversations that have involved the president himself in discussions related to Hunter Biden’s business ventures.
Meanwhile, Issa also went on to tell Fox News Digital that the White House Counsel’s office is “providing a shield because the White House Counsel is not answering the questions.”
“The White House spokesperson is supposed to answer questions, and when they refer a question to a non-answer, that becomes the obstruction,” Issa said.
But Issa stressed that the White House’s “story has changed.”
“It is clear that the president has lied—he has lied as to his relationship with Hunter Biden in business dealings that netted initially tax-free millions of dollars to Hunter Biden,” he said.
A spokesperson for the White House Counsel’s Office told Fox News Digital: “The President was never in business with his son.”
The president, when asked directly on Monday whether he lied about not having communication with his son regarding his business dealings, said: “No.”
Issa’s comments come after an IRS whistleblower shared a WhatsApp message from 2017 in which Hunter Biden allegedly told a Chinese business associate that he and his father would ensure “you will regret not following my direction.”
“I am sitting here with my father, and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” Hunter Biden told Henry Zhao, the director of Chinese asset management firm Harvest Fund Management, in the message provided by IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley. “And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction.”
The House Ways and Means Committee released that testimony after the Justice Department announced that Hunter Biden will plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of willful failure to pay federal income tax as part of a deal that is expected to keep him out of prison.
The president’s son also agreed to enter into a pretrial diversion agreement with regard to a separate charge of possession of a firearm by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance.
The Oversight Committee concludes that the deal with the CCP showed that “As more facts come to light, it becomes even more evident that the Bidens put China and their interests first and America last.”
The Hunter and Joe Biden business deals with Ukraine, China, and Romania grew more interesting over the weekend when financial investigator Peter Schweitzer dropped that Joe Biden had a phone paid for by Hunter’s business (or one of them), which he encouraged the Oversight Committee to look into. This phone was separate from his government phone or personal phone. Schweitzer says this was a separate, worldwide, $300 per-month phone using AT&T.
Is this where The Big Guy did his business? Is this the phone on which the Ukrainian Burisma oligarch got what he claims are 17 recordings of Hunter and Joe asking for bribes?
Biden always wanted to run for president, but the then-Vice President Biden took himself out of the running in 2015 after his son Beau died. However, by 2019, he had put an exploratory committee together and was shaking the trees for money.
Richard Nixon said in the early days of Watergate that “People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook.”
Little did Americans know when they voted for him that Biden was being paid by the other team. They deserved to know then and deserve to know now “if their president is a crook.”-Victoria Taft, PJ Media
The Biden White House has repeatedly claimed they are the “most transparent administration in American history,” but a Fox News Digital review found that the visitor logs from the beginning of the Biden administration through February 2023 have not included any of Hunter Biden’s White House visits or extended stays.
Fox News Digital reviewed several articles to piece together Hunter Biden’s whereabouts during his dad’s administration and found that he has visited the White House over a dozen times through February 2023, the month accounted for in the most recent batch of visitor logs released last month.
A majority of the White House visits that Fox News Digital found were from 2022, which include the annual egg roll, Medal of Freedom ceremony, France State Dinner on the South Lawn, Christmas tree lighting, his daughter’s wedding, among others. However, they are all absent from the visitor logs, including what appear to be extended stays at the White House.
While many of these events are ceremonial and a tradition at the White House, Fox News Digital previously reported how Hunter Biden sought to use such events for his personal financial gain during the Obama administration.
Hunter his longtime business partner, Eric Schwerin, would coordinate with his father’s White House staff to invite business associates and potential business partners they were courting to official events.
“The White House will not release access records related to purely personal guests of the First and Second Families (i.e., visits that do not involve any official or political business),” the policy states, which appears to be less transparent than the Obama administration.
But a Fox News Digital review found that while the Obama administration does not reveal all the Biden family member visits and omitted several Hunter visits, they included over 70 logs, including Hunter, Hunter’s daughters and now ex-wife, Biden’s brothers and other relatives.
In addition to Hunter, several other Biden family members are absent on the visitor logs from the Biden administration, including President Biden’s brothers, his daughter, his granddaughters, among others. While his sister, Valerie Biden Owens or Valerie J. Owens, shows up a few times as visiting the White House, she has likely visited several more times due to her role as her brother’s closest confidante and her close working relationship with several members of Biden’s senior staff.
Hunter and his wife, Melissa Cohen Biden; Hunter’s sister, Ashley Biden; and his aunt, Valerie Owens, were all guests at the state dinner honoring French President Emmanuel Macron, but their names are not listed.
Between March and June 2023, months that have not been cataloged yet through visitor logs, Hunter Biden has been seen frequently at the White House, igniting rumors that he is living there full-time, according to the New York Post. Fox News White House Correspondent Peter Doocy said back in April on “Fox & Friends” that it is “unclear” whether Hunter has been living there full-time, but said, “We do see him there a lot.”
Bloomberg published an analysis Monday on Biden’s White House visitor logs, finding “duplications, anomalies and missing names” in the records. The publication said the gaps raise “questions about the accuracy and completeness of the logs that record business meetings, social functions and receptions with Biden and other officials at the White House complex, which includes adjacent office buildings.”
Bloomberg’s deep dive, for example, found that former White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain reported only six visitors over two years despite his high-level position.
The records can also conceal who visitors are meeting. A White House official previously confirmed to Fox News Digital that George Soros’ son, Alex Soros, twice visited Klain, but the records did not outright list Klain as the intended host. Instead, it listed lower-level staffers.
Biden’s lack of transparency for visitors at both of his Delaware residences, including the beach house, has also come under scrutiny as Biden faces questions about his role in his son’s foreign business dealings and who is visiting him while he takes frequent weekend trips back to Delaware. Earlier this year, Republicans requested the records after Biden’s lawyers discovered classified documents inside his home’s garage. However, the president’s lawyers said they do not maintain a list of who visits the house.- Joe Schoffstall, Cameron Cawthorne, Fox New
Hunter Biden: The struggles and scandals of the US president’s sonBy Sam CabralBBC News, Washington
During the 2020 election campaign, it emerged that a laptop the younger Mr Biden abandoned at a repair shop contained a 2015 email in which a Burisma adviser thanked him for the invitation to meet his father, then the US vice-president, in Washington DC.
Without providing evidence, the elder Mr Biden called the allegations a “smear campaign” engineered by Russian disinformation.
And though the email has since been authenticated, his representatives have repeatedly denied such a meeting ever took place, adding that Joe Biden had never discussed going into business with his relatives.
The FBI reportedly seized the laptop from the repair shop and its contents were examined as part of the federal investigation into Hunter Biden.
An NBC News analysis concluded that Hunter’s firm brought in about $11m (£9.2m) through its work in Ukraine and China from 2013-18, including nearly $5m from the Louisiana gas venture alone.
It also reportedly revealed spending of more than $200,000 a month at one point on luxury hotel suites, sports car payments and cash withdrawals, among other expenditures.
Congressional Republicans are also looking into reports that a wealthy Hollywood lawyer has loaned $2m to help Hunter pay off his back taxes, CBS reported this year.
President Biden has defended Hunter on multiple occasions.
After graduating from Yale Law School, Hunter worked at MBNA America, a bank holding company headquartered in Delaware and later acquired by Bank of America.
However, his father’s close relationship with the bank – one of the largest employers in Delaware and a top contributor to his political campaigns – earned him the unfavourable moniker of “the senator from MBNA”. As the younger Mr Biden rose to the rank of executive vice-president, his father pushed bankruptcy reform legislation favourable to the bank through the Senate.
In the early 2000s, while still receiving consulting fees from the bank, Hunter opened a Washington lobbying practice that – according to Politico Magazine – saw him land “clients with interests that overlapped with [his father’s] committee assignments and legislative priorities”.
In 2006, with then-Senator Biden set to re-assume chairmanship of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, his son and another relative made an ill-fated purchase of a hedge fund group, Paradigm Global Advisors.
Their tenure at Paradigm extended through Joe Biden’s 2008 run for president and selection as vice-president to President Barack Obama. During this time, the fund was connected with several alleged criminal frauds, including a Texas financier convicted of running one of the largest Ponzi schemes in US history. The Bidens denied any wrongdoing and faced no charges. In 2010, they liquidated the fund and returned money to investors. – BBC
What have the Bidens been accused of in China?The New York Post cited a purported email from Hunter Biden in August 2017 indicating he was receiving a $10m annual fee from a Chinese billionaire for “introductions alone”, though it is unclear who was involved in the alleged introductions.
Another purported email, which Fox News said it had confirmed, reportedly refers to a deal pursued by Hunter involving China’s largest private energy firm. It is said to include a cryptic mention of “10 held by H for the big guy”.
Fox News cited unnamed sources as saying “the big guy” in the purported email was a reference to Joe Biden. This message is said to be from May 2017. Both emails would date from when the former US vice-president was a private citizen.
A former business associate of Hunter Biden has come forward to say he can confirm the allegations.
Tony Bobulinski told Fox News that, contrary to Joe Biden’s statements that he had nothing to do with his son’s business affairs, Hunter had “frequently referenced asking him for his sign-off or advice on various potential deals” in China.
Mr Bobulinski, who is reportedly a US Navy veteran, separately told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson that he had met on two occasions with Joe Biden to discuss business deals with China, the first time in May 2017 when Barack Obama’s former vice-president was a private citizen.
He says he asked Joe Biden’s brother, James, whether the family was concerned about possible scrutiny of the former vice-president’s involvement in a potential business deal with a Chinese entity. Mr Bobulinski told Fox News that James Biden had replied: “Plausible deniability.”-BBC
What is known about Hunter’s dealings in China?In 2013, Hunter flew aboard Air Force Two with his father, who was then vice-president, on an official visit to Beijing, where the younger Biden met investment banker Jonathan Li.
Hunter told the New Yorker he had just met Mr Li for “a cup of coffee”, but 12 days after the trip a private equity fund, BHR Partners, was approved by the Chinese authorities. Mr Li was chief executive and Hunter was a board member. He would hold a 10% stake.
BHR is backed by some of China’s largest state banks and by local governments, according to US media.
Hunter Biden’s lawyer said he had joined the board in an unpaid position “based on his interest in seeking ways to bring Chinese capital to international markets”.
His lawyer also said his client did not acquire his financial stake in BHR until 2017, after his father had left office in the US.
Hunter resigned from the board of BHR in April 2020, but still held his 10% stake in BHR as of July this year, according to the company report.- BBC
As the lead IRS official on the Biden case, Shapley has testified that U.S. Attorney David C. Weiss, the lead Department of Justice prosecutor on the same case, was rebuffed by federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles when he requested that Biden be charged for tax crimes committed in 2014 and 2015 in those jurisdictions. Here’s the Times‘ account and confirmation of that allegation (emphasis mine):
But in mid-2022, Mr. Weiss reached out to the top federal prosecutor in Washington, Matthew Graves, to ask his office to pursue charges and was rebuffed, according to Mr. Shapley’s testimony.
A similar request to prosecutors in the Central District of California, which includes Los Angeles, was also rejected, Mr. Shapley testified. A second former I.R.S. official, who has not been identified, told House Republicans the same story. That episode was confirmed independently to The New York Times by a person with knowledge of the situation.
The whistleblower further alleged that Weiss told him and a group of six other FBI and IRS agents that he would not ultimately be the “deciding official” when it came time to either charge the president’s son or not and that he was denied special counsel status — which would allow him to pursue charges in jurisdictions outside of his own in Delaware — when he requested it.
WE NEED A DISTRACTION, start a war, blame something on Trump,
The stuff Hunter Biden didn’t get indicted for, by Byron York, WE
That was big. But there is a second IRS whistleblower whose testimony was also released last week. This whistleblower, who is anonymous, was the lead case agent for the Hunter Biden investigation. As such, he had a detailed, hands-on knowledge of the evidence in the case. He is the IRS agent who would have testified against Hunter Biden had any case against him gone to trial.
This agent — call him WB2, for whistleblower No. 2 — told House investigators a remarkable story. It started with Hunter Biden before his father became vice president, before becoming a crack addict. “Hunter Biden had had a lot of tax issues, even predating all this stuff,” WB2 testified. “Back in 2002, he filed his Form 1040 late — filing and owing over $100,000 in taxes; 2003, owed more than $100,000 in taxes; 2004, late-filed and owed more than $20,000 in taxes; and then 2005, late-filed his personal return and owed over $100,000 in taxes.”
Fast-forward to 2014, when Joe Biden was vice president and a corrupt Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, put Hunter Biden on its board of directors. According to WB2, Burisma paid Hunter Biden $666,667 that year to do little or no work. Hunter Biden received the money, WB2 explained, and then moved it to a Chinese company run by one of his associates. That company then “loaned” the money to Hunter Biden.
“So imagine this,” WB2 said. “If you are an owner of a company and your friend tells you that, ‘I want to pay my wages to your company, and you’re going to loan the money back to me,’ that’s essentially what happened here. He took loans from that corporation … and he didn’t pay taxes on those loans. … So essentially, for 2014, we found that Hunter didn’t report any of the money he earned from Burisma.” The problem, WB2 said, was: “You can’t loan yourself your own income.”
A House Republican lawyer asked: “So none of this was taxed?” WB2 responded: “None of it was taxed.” The lawyer said: “And to date, none of it has been paid or prosecuted?” WB2 responded: “So none of this has been paid or prosecuted. And I would also like to note that the statute [of limitations] has run out on these tax years or on the 2014 tax year.” The year 2014 was not part of the misdemeanor charges against Hunter Biden. As far as the IRS and Justice Department are concerned, that’s all over.
In an extremely complex arrangement, Hunter Biden did pay some of his taxes on Burisma money in 2015. But then, in 2016, Hunter Biden did not file a personal return at all and did not pay the $581,713 he owed in taxes, according to WB2. Hunter Biden moved to California, entered his drug addict years, and did not file tax returns for 2017 or 2018, either. In 2019, he got sober and faced a child support case for a child he had had with a former stripper in Arkansas. He hired a new accountant and, in February 2020, filed his 2017 and 2018 returns, according to WB2.
The 2018 return, WB2 said, contained false claims for deductions. “Some of the items that he deducted were personal no-show employees,” WB2 said. “He deducted payments that were made to who he called his West Coast assistant, but she was essentially a prostitute. He made payments — there’s an $18,000 wire that is made to one of these individuals, and on the wires, they say $8,000 in wage and $10,000 in golf — $10,000 golf club member deposit. And we know that that $10,000 went to pay for a sex club. He went to a sex club — and we’ve talked to the person that owned that sex club, and they confirmed that he was there. And the [sex club member] has to pay $10,000 … so that was deducted on the tax return.”
Nothing to see here:Hunter Biden also “deducted expenses for hotel rooms for one of his drug dealers or what we believed to be one of his drug dealers,” WB2 added. “There was a significant amount of expenses deducted related to his girlfriend at the time, Airbnbs related to her, hotel rooms. So he deducted a lot for the Chateau Marmont, and he actually was blacklisted and thrown out of the Chateau Marmont. We actually have … photos of the rooms and the destruction that was done to the rooms.”
In those years, Hunter Biden was in full flight when it came to profiting from his father’s name and influence. The money wasn’t just coming from Ukraine. It was coming from all over the world. “Global income streams for everyone altogether, so it’s for the period 2014 through 2019, our investigative years, so the total global transfers that Hunter and his associates would have received from Ukraine, Romania, and China was $17.3 million, approximately,” WB2 said. But that was for everyone involved in the Hunter Biden enterprise. As for Hunter Biden himself, WB2 said: “Of this amount, for the period 2014 through … the end of 2019 — that’s when income stops coming in — it’s $8.3 million. This is what Hunter would have received of that.” That’s the bottom line for Hunter Biden’s foreign income during that period: $8.3 million.
The IRS investigation began in 2018. “The investigation into Hunter Biden, code name Sportsman, was first opened in November 2018 as an offshoot of an investigation the IRS was conducting into a foreign-based amateur online p0rn0graphy platform,” Shapley told House investigators.
By the time his father was the Democratic candidate for president, Hunter Biden owed a lot of unpaid taxes. By Shapley’s estimation, the total owed was $2.2 million. Since 2014, Hunter Biden has sometimes failed to file his returns, has failed to pay tons of tax, and has fraudulently claimed deductions for payments to prostitutes. How could he get out of such a situation?
One big step would be to pay off all his taxes and penalties. Many news accounts of the Hunter Biden story have noted that prosecutors are less likely to charge a person who has committed tax crimes if that person ultimately paid off his or her bill. The idea is that a jury would ask: Hey, this guy has paid what he owes, so why are you putting him on trial? Hunter Biden could put himself in an infinitely better position if he paid the IRS what he owed. But that was $2.2 million. Where could Hunter Biden get $2.2 million?
Enter Kevin Morris. A wealthy Hollywood celebrity lawyer, Morris apparently met Hunter Biden at a political fundraiser in the 2019-20 period. And then, when Joe Biden was in the White House, Morris paid the younger Biden’s tax bill.
According to WB2, on his 2020 tax returns, Hunter Biden included a note: “The taxpayer received financial support from a personal friend totaling approximately $1.4 million. The parties agreed in 2020 to treat the support as a loan and later documented their agreement in a promissory note in the amount of $1.4 million, 5% interest. The promissory note requires periodic payments between 2025 and 2027. The promissory note was executed by both parties on October 13th, 2021. The taxpayer is treating this amount as a loan for tax purposes. The balance of the financial support is treated as a gift. No amount of the support is treated as a reported taxable event on this return.”
In later months, Morris gave his friend even more money — approximately $800,00 more, bringing Morris’s total payoff of Hunter Biden’s tax liabilities to the full $2.2 million owed. The Morris money would serve as a roadblock to those IRS agents who wanted to prosecute Hunter Biden. “The payment could make it harder for prosecutors to win a conviction or a long sentence for tax-related offenses, according to tax law experts, since juries and judges tend to be more sympathetic to defendants who have paid their bills,” the New York Times reported in 2022. Of course, Hunter Biden did not actually pay his bills. Morris did.
In WB2’s testimony, a Republican lawyer asked about the Morris loans: “Has that transaction been investigated?” WB2 responded, “I’m no longer a part of an investigation related to that.” As part of what the whistleblowers say is retaliation against them, top IRS officials removed both WB2 and Shapley from the Hunter Biden case.
And now the matter has been resolved with two misdemeanor charges. The conclusion is deeply frustrating to IRS agents like WB2. Hunter Biden failed to file returns, failed to pay his taxes for several years, and falsely claimed deductions. WB2 also pointed out, more than once, that Hunter Biden’s tax offenses occurred over a period of years, some of which he was on drugs and some of which he was not, meaning that not all of the violations can be attributed to Hunter Biden’s being in a drug-induced haze, as some defenders suggest. The agents’ conclusion is that just because Hunter Biden’s new friend bailed him out — no repayments required until 2025 — does not mean Hunter Biden did not violate the tax laws repeatedly in the 2010s.
Yes, a crime has been committed for everyone else except “special” dims…
At the end of WB2’s deposition, a Republican lawyer asked this question: “If someone meets all the elements for a crime of willful evasion and are found to, in conjunction with that, owe a liability, and they pay off that liability years later when they’ve been caught, has a crime been committed?”
GOGOPOWERANGERS about 1 year ago
Lisa second favourite dictator
Al Fresco, the Librarian about 1 year ago
Just get out of Ukraine and go home.
braindead Premium Member about 1 year ago
But, Lisa!
Your Messiah, the Stable Genius, says Putin is a Savvy Genius.
Didja forget?
mrwiskers about 1 year ago
One interpretation: look how small the bully is compared to his potential for chaos.
mourdac Premium Member about 1 year ago
A bleeding mess which, somehow, can has gotten even worse.
ladykat about 1 year ago
Putin looks a little worried.
ncorgbl about 1 year ago
The consistency of conservative political pundits is their failure of any loyalty to their own stated positions. When the time comes they will even turn on tRump. They are only loyal to their own selfish, self-centered view of the moment that they see as helping their own selves.
198.23.5.11 about 1 year ago
Where’s that peace-loving Khruschev guy when we need him?
Free Radical about 1 year ago
Can putin last until your favorite former US dictator gets back into power?
Ivan the Terrible about 1 year ago
Vlad hides from no one.
Alberta Oil Premium Member about 1 year ago
Whatever happened to Americas mercenary army, the one they used in Afghanistan and Iraq?
dpatrickryan Premium Member about 1 year ago
The Rethuglicans just can’t hide their fanboying for dictators, can they?
fjblume2000 about 1 year ago
After scanning this thread, I have a proposal: For the sake of argument, let’s deem Trump to have been an aberration in the American body politic. What does it say about our jurisprudence when Hillary skates (with the connivence of Comey’s FBI in declaring her sins non-prosecutable), when she had been briefed on her responsibilities vis a vis classified materials? BTW, the decision to prosecute or not in the FBI’s purview, it’s in the judiciary. Sorry about the “But she did …” defense. But let’s unseal the indictments, shall we?
Anonamoose Premium Member about 1 year ago
The left glove holds nukes, and who knows what Putin will do if he’s cornered.
Ivan the Terrible about 1 year ago
Now that we have all depleted our ammunition reserves, let’s declare peace!
cdbro about 1 year ago
a diversion from the truth of the Biden Cabal’s treason:
Hunter Biden texted a Chinese business executive bragging about his ability to serve his client, the House Oversight Committee revealed Tuesday afternoon.Biden apparently boasted on Aug. 3, 2017, to Gongwen Dong, an executive at CEFC, an energy firm linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), about how his family is “the best” at doing what Dong’s bosses want.“The Biden’s are the best I know at doing exactly what the Chairman wants from this [partnership],” Hunter Biden texted, according to the House Oversight Committee.
The following day, one of Biden’s shell companies was paid $100,000 from CEFC, the committee discovered.
“I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight,” Hunter Biden allegedly wrote. “And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”The White House said “the President was not in business with his son” in response to the IRS whistleblower testimony. Hunter Biden’s lawyer said his client’s words are “solely his own and have no connection to anyone in his family.”Testimony by a separate IRS whistleblower accused Biden of moving payments from Ukrainian energy firm Burisma to a Chinese firm to avoid paying taxes.House Oversight released a memo in May detailing how the Biden family allegedly attempted to hide more than $10 million in foreign payments.Dong allegedly tried to hide his $100,000 payment to Biden by creating a limited liability company (LLC), CEFC Infrastructure, with its “sole equity member” being another one of his LLCs.
cdbro about 1 year ago
Dong’s LLC transferred its stake in CEFC Infrastructure to Shanghai Huaxin Group, which put $10 million into the account of CEFC Infrastructure. The firm later wired $100,000 to Hunter Biden’s LLC, Owasco P.C, according to House Oversight.
In March, House Oversight revealed how a CCP-linked firm paid $3 million to Biden family associate John Robinson Walker who sent the money to Biden family members afterwards.
“For months and months, both the president and, on his behalf, spokespeople, have been saying the president did not have business communications with his son Hunter Biden,” Issa said. “It switched just a couple of days ago now—it switched to he was ‘never in business’ with his son.”
“Huge difference,” Issa continued.
“What we can take from the change is that it is no longer considered to be true that he did not have communications with his son,” Issa said, pointing to recent reporting of emails, messages, and alleged conversations that have involved the president himself in discussions related to Hunter Biden’s business ventures.
Meanwhile, Issa also went on to tell Fox News Digital that the White House Counsel’s office is “providing a shield because the White House Counsel is not answering the questions.”
“The White House spokesperson is supposed to answer questions, and when they refer a question to a non-answer, that becomes the obstruction,” Issa said.
But Issa stressed that the White House’s “story has changed.”
cdbro about 1 year ago
“It is clear that the president has lied—he has lied as to his relationship with Hunter Biden in business dealings that netted initially tax-free millions of dollars to Hunter Biden,” he said.
A spokesperson for the White House Counsel’s Office told Fox News Digital: “The President was never in business with his son.”
The president, when asked directly on Monday whether he lied about not having communication with his son regarding his business dealings, said: “No.”
Issa’s comments come after an IRS whistleblower shared a WhatsApp message from 2017 in which Hunter Biden allegedly told a Chinese business associate that he and his father would ensure “you will regret not following my direction.”
“I am sitting here with my father, and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” Hunter Biden told Henry Zhao, the director of Chinese asset management firm Harvest Fund Management, in the message provided by IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley. “And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction.”
The House Ways and Means Committee released that testimony after the Justice Department announced that Hunter Biden will plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of willful failure to pay federal income tax as part of a deal that is expected to keep him out of prison.
The president’s son also agreed to enter into a pretrial diversion agreement with regard to a separate charge of possession of a firearm by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance.
cdbro about 1 year ago
The Oversight Committee concludes that the deal with the CCP showed that “As more facts come to light, it becomes even more evident that the Bidens put China and their interests first and America last.”
The Hunter and Joe Biden business deals with Ukraine, China, and Romania grew more interesting over the weekend when financial investigator Peter Schweitzer dropped that Joe Biden had a phone paid for by Hunter’s business (or one of them), which he encouraged the Oversight Committee to look into. This phone was separate from his government phone or personal phone. Schweitzer says this was a separate, worldwide, $300 per-month phone using AT&T.
Is this where The Big Guy did his business? Is this the phone on which the Ukrainian Burisma oligarch got what he claims are 17 recordings of Hunter and Joe asking for bribes?
Biden always wanted to run for president, but the then-Vice President Biden took himself out of the running in 2015 after his son Beau died. However, by 2019, he had put an exploratory committee together and was shaking the trees for money.
Richard Nixon said in the early days of Watergate that “People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook.”
Little did Americans know when they voted for him that Biden was being paid by the other team. They deserved to know then and deserve to know now “if their president is a crook.”-Victoria Taft, PJ Media
cdbro about 1 year ago
The Biden White House has repeatedly claimed they are the “most transparent administration in American history,” but a Fox News Digital review found that the visitor logs from the beginning of the Biden administration through February 2023 have not included any of Hunter Biden’s White House visits or extended stays.
Fox News Digital reviewed several articles to piece together Hunter Biden’s whereabouts during his dad’s administration and found that he has visited the White House over a dozen times through February 2023, the month accounted for in the most recent batch of visitor logs released last month.
A majority of the White House visits that Fox News Digital found were from 2022, which include the annual egg roll, Medal of Freedom ceremony, France State Dinner on the South Lawn, Christmas tree lighting, his daughter’s wedding, among others. However, they are all absent from the visitor logs, including what appear to be extended stays at the White House.
While many of these events are ceremonial and a tradition at the White House, Fox News Digital previously reported how Hunter Biden sought to use such events for his personal financial gain during the Obama administration.
Hunter his longtime business partner, Eric Schwerin, would coordinate with his father’s White House staff to invite business associates and potential business partners they were courting to official events.
cdbro about 1 year ago
“The White House will not release access records related to purely personal guests of the First and Second Families (i.e., visits that do not involve any official or political business),” the policy states, which appears to be less transparent than the Obama administration.
But a Fox News Digital review found that while the Obama administration does not reveal all the Biden family member visits and omitted several Hunter visits, they included over 70 logs, including Hunter, Hunter’s daughters and now ex-wife, Biden’s brothers and other relatives.
In addition to Hunter, several other Biden family members are absent on the visitor logs from the Biden administration, including President Biden’s brothers, his daughter, his granddaughters, among others. While his sister, Valerie Biden Owens or Valerie J. Owens, shows up a few times as visiting the White House, she has likely visited several more times due to her role as her brother’s closest confidante and her close working relationship with several members of Biden’s senior staff.
Hunter and his wife, Melissa Cohen Biden; Hunter’s sister, Ashley Biden; and his aunt, Valerie Owens, were all guests at the state dinner honoring French President Emmanuel Macron, but their names are not listed.
Between March and June 2023, months that have not been cataloged yet through visitor logs, Hunter Biden has been seen frequently at the White House, igniting rumors that he is living there full-time, according to the New York Post. Fox News White House Correspondent Peter Doocy said back in April on “Fox & Friends” that it is “unclear” whether Hunter has been living there full-time, but said, “We do see him there a lot.”
cdbro about 1 year ago
Bloomberg published an analysis Monday on Biden’s White House visitor logs, finding “duplications, anomalies and missing names” in the records. The publication said the gaps raise “questions about the accuracy and completeness of the logs that record business meetings, social functions and receptions with Biden and other officials at the White House complex, which includes adjacent office buildings.”
Bloomberg’s deep dive, for example, found that former White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain reported only six visitors over two years despite his high-level position.
The records can also conceal who visitors are meeting. A White House official previously confirmed to Fox News Digital that George Soros’ son, Alex Soros, twice visited Klain, but the records did not outright list Klain as the intended host. Instead, it listed lower-level staffers.
Biden’s lack of transparency for visitors at both of his Delaware residences, including the beach house, has also come under scrutiny as Biden faces questions about his role in his son’s foreign business dealings and who is visiting him while he takes frequent weekend trips back to Delaware. Earlier this year, Republicans requested the records after Biden’s lawyers discovered classified documents inside his home’s garage. However, the president’s lawyers said they do not maintain a list of who visits the house.- Joe Schoffstall, Cameron Cawthorne, Fox New
cdbro about 1 year ago
Hunter Biden: The struggles and scandals of the US president’s sonBy Sam CabralBBC News, Washington
During the 2020 election campaign, it emerged that a laptop the younger Mr Biden abandoned at a repair shop contained a 2015 email in which a Burisma adviser thanked him for the invitation to meet his father, then the US vice-president, in Washington DC.
Without providing evidence, the elder Mr Biden called the allegations a “smear campaign” engineered by Russian disinformation.
And though the email has since been authenticated, his representatives have repeatedly denied such a meeting ever took place, adding that Joe Biden had never discussed going into business with his relatives.
The FBI reportedly seized the laptop from the repair shop and its contents were examined as part of the federal investigation into Hunter Biden.
An NBC News analysis concluded that Hunter’s firm brought in about $11m (£9.2m) through its work in Ukraine and China from 2013-18, including nearly $5m from the Louisiana gas venture alone.
It also reportedly revealed spending of more than $200,000 a month at one point on luxury hotel suites, sports car payments and cash withdrawals, among other expenditures.
Congressional Republicans are also looking into reports that a wealthy Hollywood lawyer has loaned $2m to help Hunter pay off his back taxes, CBS reported this year.
President Biden has defended Hunter on multiple occasions.
cdbro about 1 year ago
After graduating from Yale Law School, Hunter worked at MBNA America, a bank holding company headquartered in Delaware and later acquired by Bank of America.
However, his father’s close relationship with the bank – one of the largest employers in Delaware and a top contributor to his political campaigns – earned him the unfavourable moniker of “the senator from MBNA”. As the younger Mr Biden rose to the rank of executive vice-president, his father pushed bankruptcy reform legislation favourable to the bank through the Senate.
In the early 2000s, while still receiving consulting fees from the bank, Hunter opened a Washington lobbying practice that – according to Politico Magazine – saw him land “clients with interests that overlapped with [his father’s] committee assignments and legislative priorities”.
In 2006, with then-Senator Biden set to re-assume chairmanship of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, his son and another relative made an ill-fated purchase of a hedge fund group, Paradigm Global Advisors.
Their tenure at Paradigm extended through Joe Biden’s 2008 run for president and selection as vice-president to President Barack Obama. During this time, the fund was connected with several alleged criminal frauds, including a Texas financier convicted of running one of the largest Ponzi schemes in US history. The Bidens denied any wrongdoing and faced no charges. In 2010, they liquidated the fund and returned money to investors. – BBC
cdbro about 1 year ago
What have the Bidens been accused of in China?The New York Post cited a purported email from Hunter Biden in August 2017 indicating he was receiving a $10m annual fee from a Chinese billionaire for “introductions alone”, though it is unclear who was involved in the alleged introductions.
Another purported email, which Fox News said it had confirmed, reportedly refers to a deal pursued by Hunter involving China’s largest private energy firm. It is said to include a cryptic mention of “10 held by H for the big guy”.
Fox News cited unnamed sources as saying “the big guy” in the purported email was a reference to Joe Biden. This message is said to be from May 2017. Both emails would date from when the former US vice-president was a private citizen.
A former business associate of Hunter Biden has come forward to say he can confirm the allegations.
Tony Bobulinski told Fox News that, contrary to Joe Biden’s statements that he had nothing to do with his son’s business affairs, Hunter had “frequently referenced asking him for his sign-off or advice on various potential deals” in China.
Mr Bobulinski, who is reportedly a US Navy veteran, separately told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson that he had met on two occasions with Joe Biden to discuss business deals with China, the first time in May 2017 when Barack Obama’s former vice-president was a private citizen.
He says he asked Joe Biden’s brother, James, whether the family was concerned about possible scrutiny of the former vice-president’s involvement in a potential business deal with a Chinese entity. Mr Bobulinski told Fox News that James Biden had replied: “Plausible deniability.”-BBC
cdbro about 1 year ago
What is known about Hunter’s dealings in China?In 2013, Hunter flew aboard Air Force Two with his father, who was then vice-president, on an official visit to Beijing, where the younger Biden met investment banker Jonathan Li.
Hunter told the New Yorker he had just met Mr Li for “a cup of coffee”, but 12 days after the trip a private equity fund, BHR Partners, was approved by the Chinese authorities. Mr Li was chief executive and Hunter was a board member. He would hold a 10% stake.
BHR is backed by some of China’s largest state banks and by local governments, according to US media.
Hunter Biden’s lawyer said he had joined the board in an unpaid position “based on his interest in seeking ways to bring Chinese capital to international markets”.
His lawyer also said his client did not acquire his financial stake in BHR until 2017, after his father had left office in the US.
Hunter resigned from the board of BHR in April 2020, but still held his 10% stake in BHR as of July this year, according to the company report.- BBC
cdbro about 1 year ago
NY TIMES CONFIRMS THE 2 TEIRD INJUSTICE:
As the lead IRS official on the Biden case, Shapley has testified that U.S. Attorney David C. Weiss, the lead Department of Justice prosecutor on the same case, was rebuffed by federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles when he requested that Biden be charged for tax crimes committed in 2014 and 2015 in those jurisdictions. Here’s the Times‘ account and confirmation of that allegation (emphasis mine):
But in mid-2022, Mr. Weiss reached out to the top federal prosecutor in Washington, Matthew Graves, to ask his office to pursue charges and was rebuffed, according to Mr. Shapley’s testimony.
A similar request to prosecutors in the Central District of California, which includes Los Angeles, was also rejected, Mr. Shapley testified. A second former I.R.S. official, who has not been identified, told House Republicans the same story. That episode was confirmed independently to The New York Times by a person with knowledge of the situation.
The whistleblower further alleged that Weiss told him and a group of six other FBI and IRS agents that he would not ultimately be the “deciding official” when it came time to either charge the president’s son or not and that he was denied special counsel status — which would allow him to pursue charges in jurisdictions outside of his own in Delaware — when he requested it.
Kracklin Rosie - “Tolo Dan Nan Galad” Premium Member about 1 year ago
Well done CDBRO. Of course the left wingers suffering from ideological cognitive dissonance will bury their collective heads on this.
cdbro about 1 year ago
WE NEED A DISTRACTION, start a war, blame something on Trump,
The stuff Hunter Biden didn’t get indicted for, by Byron York, WE
That was big. But there is a second IRS whistleblower whose testimony was also released last week. This whistleblower, who is anonymous, was the lead case agent for the Hunter Biden investigation. As such, he had a detailed, hands-on knowledge of the evidence in the case. He is the IRS agent who would have testified against Hunter Biden had any case against him gone to trial.
This agent — call him WB2, for whistleblower No. 2 — told House investigators a remarkable story. It started with Hunter Biden before his father became vice president, before becoming a crack addict. “Hunter Biden had had a lot of tax issues, even predating all this stuff,” WB2 testified. “Back in 2002, he filed his Form 1040 late — filing and owing over $100,000 in taxes; 2003, owed more than $100,000 in taxes; 2004, late-filed and owed more than $20,000 in taxes; and then 2005, late-filed his personal return and owed over $100,000 in taxes.”
Fast-forward to 2014, when Joe Biden was vice president and a corrupt Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, put Hunter Biden on its board of directors. According to WB2, Burisma paid Hunter Biden $666,667 that year to do little or no work. Hunter Biden received the money, WB2 explained, and then moved it to a Chinese company run by one of his associates. That company then “loaned” the money to Hunter Biden.
“So imagine this,” WB2 said. “If you are an owner of a company and your friend tells you that, ‘I want to pay my wages to your company, and you’re going to loan the money back to me,’ that’s essentially what happened here. He took loans from that corporation … and he didn’t pay taxes on those loans. … So essentially, for 2014, we found that Hunter didn’t report any of the money he earned from Burisma.” The problem, WB2 said, was: “You can’t loan yourself your own income.”
cdbro about 1 year ago
A House Republican lawyer asked: “So none of this was taxed?” WB2 responded: “None of it was taxed.” The lawyer said: “And to date, none of it has been paid or prosecuted?” WB2 responded: “So none of this has been paid or prosecuted. And I would also like to note that the statute [of limitations] has run out on these tax years or on the 2014 tax year.” The year 2014 was not part of the misdemeanor charges against Hunter Biden. As far as the IRS and Justice Department are concerned, that’s all over.
In an extremely complex arrangement, Hunter Biden did pay some of his taxes on Burisma money in 2015. But then, in 2016, Hunter Biden did not file a personal return at all and did not pay the $581,713 he owed in taxes, according to WB2. Hunter Biden moved to California, entered his drug addict years, and did not file tax returns for 2017 or 2018, either. In 2019, he got sober and faced a child support case for a child he had had with a former stripper in Arkansas. He hired a new accountant and, in February 2020, filed his 2017 and 2018 returns, according to WB2.
The 2018 return, WB2 said, contained false claims for deductions. “Some of the items that he deducted were personal no-show employees,” WB2 said. “He deducted payments that were made to who he called his West Coast assistant, but she was essentially a prostitute. He made payments — there’s an $18,000 wire that is made to one of these individuals, and on the wires, they say $8,000 in wage and $10,000 in golf — $10,000 golf club member deposit. And we know that that $10,000 went to pay for a sex club. He went to a sex club — and we’ve talked to the person that owned that sex club, and they confirmed that he was there. And the [sex club member] has to pay $10,000 … so that was deducted on the tax return.”
cdbro about 1 year ago
Nothing to see here:Hunter Biden also “deducted expenses for hotel rooms for one of his drug dealers or what we believed to be one of his drug dealers,” WB2 added. “There was a significant amount of expenses deducted related to his girlfriend at the time, Airbnbs related to her, hotel rooms. So he deducted a lot for the Chateau Marmont, and he actually was blacklisted and thrown out of the Chateau Marmont. We actually have … photos of the rooms and the destruction that was done to the rooms.”
In those years, Hunter Biden was in full flight when it came to profiting from his father’s name and influence. The money wasn’t just coming from Ukraine. It was coming from all over the world. “Global income streams for everyone altogether, so it’s for the period 2014 through 2019, our investigative years, so the total global transfers that Hunter and his associates would have received from Ukraine, Romania, and China was $17.3 million, approximately,” WB2 said. But that was for everyone involved in the Hunter Biden enterprise. As for Hunter Biden himself, WB2 said: “Of this amount, for the period 2014 through … the end of 2019 — that’s when income stops coming in — it’s $8.3 million. This is what Hunter would have received of that.” That’s the bottom line for Hunter Biden’s foreign income during that period: $8.3 million.
The IRS investigation began in 2018. “The investigation into Hunter Biden, code name Sportsman, was first opened in November 2018 as an offshoot of an investigation the IRS was conducting into a foreign-based amateur online p0rn0graphy platform,” Shapley told House investigators.
By the time his father was the Democratic candidate for president, Hunter Biden owed a lot of unpaid taxes. By Shapley’s estimation, the total owed was $2.2 million. Since 2014, Hunter Biden has sometimes failed to file his returns, has failed to pay tons of tax, and has fraudulently claimed deductions for payments to prostitutes. How could he get out of such a situation?
cdbro about 1 year ago
One big step would be to pay off all his taxes and penalties. Many news accounts of the Hunter Biden story have noted that prosecutors are less likely to charge a person who has committed tax crimes if that person ultimately paid off his or her bill. The idea is that a jury would ask: Hey, this guy has paid what he owes, so why are you putting him on trial? Hunter Biden could put himself in an infinitely better position if he paid the IRS what he owed. But that was $2.2 million. Where could Hunter Biden get $2.2 million?
Enter Kevin Morris. A wealthy Hollywood celebrity lawyer, Morris apparently met Hunter Biden at a political fundraiser in the 2019-20 period. And then, when Joe Biden was in the White House, Morris paid the younger Biden’s tax bill.
According to WB2, on his 2020 tax returns, Hunter Biden included a note: “The taxpayer received financial support from a personal friend totaling approximately $1.4 million. The parties agreed in 2020 to treat the support as a loan and later documented their agreement in a promissory note in the amount of $1.4 million, 5% interest. The promissory note requires periodic payments between 2025 and 2027. The promissory note was executed by both parties on October 13th, 2021. The taxpayer is treating this amount as a loan for tax purposes. The balance of the financial support is treated as a gift. No amount of the support is treated as a reported taxable event on this return.”
cdbro about 1 year ago
In later months, Morris gave his friend even more money — approximately $800,00 more, bringing Morris’s total payoff of Hunter Biden’s tax liabilities to the full $2.2 million owed. The Morris money would serve as a roadblock to those IRS agents who wanted to prosecute Hunter Biden. “The payment could make it harder for prosecutors to win a conviction or a long sentence for tax-related offenses, according to tax law experts, since juries and judges tend to be more sympathetic to defendants who have paid their bills,” the New York Times reported in 2022. Of course, Hunter Biden did not actually pay his bills. Morris did.
In WB2’s testimony, a Republican lawyer asked about the Morris loans: “Has that transaction been investigated?” WB2 responded, “I’m no longer a part of an investigation related to that.” As part of what the whistleblowers say is retaliation against them, top IRS officials removed both WB2 and Shapley from the Hunter Biden case.
And now the matter has been resolved with two misdemeanor charges. The conclusion is deeply frustrating to IRS agents like WB2. Hunter Biden failed to file returns, failed to pay his taxes for several years, and falsely claimed deductions. WB2 also pointed out, more than once, that Hunter Biden’s tax offenses occurred over a period of years, some of which he was on drugs and some of which he was not, meaning that not all of the violations can be attributed to Hunter Biden’s being in a drug-induced haze, as some defenders suggest. The agents’ conclusion is that just because Hunter Biden’s new friend bailed him out — no repayments required until 2025 — does not mean Hunter Biden did not violate the tax laws repeatedly in the 2010s.
cdbro about 1 year ago
Yes, a crime has been committed for everyone else except “special” dims…
At the end of WB2’s deposition, a Republican lawyer asked this question: “If someone meets all the elements for a crime of willful evasion and are found to, in conjunction with that, owe a liability, and they pay off that liability years later when they’ve been caught, has a crime been committed?”
WB2 answered simply: “Yes.”
dandye about 1 year ago
The Left only has Xi left to fawn over since Mao and Stalin and Fidel died. So they have to try and tie the Right to Putin!