by Steven Richards
The newly disclosed payment from Hunter Biden's Owasco PC directly to Joe Biden uncovered by the Oversight Committee occurred while Hunter Biden was still receiving payments from a joint venture with a Chinese company with communist party connections. At the same time, Wells Fargo compliance officers were questioning the flow of funds in his business accounts.
Newly disclosed bank records, released on Monday as part of the House Republicans' ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Biden, indicate that Hunter Biden arranged direct, monthly payments to his father. The records show that at least one payment of $1,380 was sent from Hunter Biden’s Owasco PC to Joe Biden in September 17, 2018.
At the time, Hunter Biden’s Owasco PC account was receiving payments from Hudson West III, a joint venture set up with executives from CEFC China Energy. The joint venture appeared to be in the process of winding down after CEFC’s founder and chairman, Ye Jianming, was detained and disappeared in China earlier in 2018, according to emails obtained from Hunter Biden’s laptop.
This new revelation fits a pattern that has emerged in the House investigation into the President and his family’s business dealings. That pattern suggests that Joe and Hunter Biden’s finances were intertwined, while Hunter Biden was raking in millions from his foreign business deals.
For his part, the President and the White House insist that he had no knowledge or relationship to his son's business deals and repeat that there is "no evidence" to the contrary.
“Despite receiving this significant volume of material, House Republicans have just failed to turn up any evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden – but plenty of evidence debunking their claims,” White House spokesperson Ian Sams wrote in a memo released last week, according to Axios.
“Today, the House Oversight Committee is releasing subpoenaed bank records that show Hunter Biden’s business entity, Owasco PC, made direct monthly payments to Joe Biden,” Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said in the committee’s press release.
“This wasn’t a payment from Hunter Biden’s personal account but an account for his corporation that received payments from China and other shady corners of the world,” Comer continued.
The ACH Authorization Agreement document released by the committee reveals shows a payment scheme—signed and authorized by Hunter Biden—to send “periodic transfers” from his Owasco PC account to “Joseph R Biden Jr.” The payments were set to begin on September 15, 2018, around the same time that the account continued to receive payments from one of Hunter Biden’s Chinese joint ventures.
You can read the bank record below:
On September 13, 2018, four days before the $1,380 payment was transferred from the Owasco PC account to Joe Biden, Hunter Biden received an email from Wells Fargo, forwarding questions from its corporate compliance team.
“What is the purpose of the incoming wires from Hudson West?” the compliance team asked. “What is the business type for Hudson West? Who are the beneficial owners? What is the business address?” the questions continued.
According to this email obtained from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, Wells Fargo appeared to have concerns about the incoming wires to his accounts from the Chinese-connected entity and Hunter Biden’s use of those business accounts for personal expenses. The team also questioned why Owasco was sending outgoing wires to Lion Hall Group, the entity owned by Hunter Biden’s uncle, James Biden.
The laptop from which the information came was initially dismissed as "Russian disinformation" by then-candidate Joe Biden's campaign staff and most mainstream media. The New York Times took a year and a half after the election to finally admit the laptop was genuine.
You can read the email from Wells Fargo below:
Earlier that summer, bank money laundering investigators also flagged a $5 million loan from Northern International Capital Holdings (HK) Limited to Hudson West III, of which almost $3 million ended up in Hunter Biden’s Owasco PC law firm account, Just the News previously reported, citing an email released by the House Oversight Committee last week.
You can read that email here:
It is not yet certain how much Hunter Biden’s Owasco PC account received from Hudson West III in proximity to his payment to Joe Biden. About one week after the first transfer to Joe Biden’s account, Hunter Biden emailed a Hudson West III official and his uncle, directing further wires to his account and indicated that he had taken a $35,000 advance “last week,” coinciding with the payment to his father one week and one day earlier, according to the bank records.
“Please wire to my Owasco PC account the remaining two monthgkly [sic] draws minus the 35K adv once [sic] I took last week,” the typo-laden email reads. “So $295,000.00 today,” Hunter Biden explained.
This more than $300,000 total transfer to Owasco PC was fulfilled as Hudson West III was coming to the end of its life. Hunter Biden directed Hudson West III official, Mervyn Yan, to draw his money from the entity and then prepare to “unwind” as soon as possible.
“Then please give men detailed bank statements of what is left in the account after you’ve taken your final two draws,” Hunter Biden wrote. “We then need two [sic] discuss what we owe and to whom and determine what of any money is left for disbursement. Then we can unwind in an orderly way as soon was poswswible [sic],” he continued.
You can read Hunter Biden’s email to Yan below:
Hudson West III was a joint venture born out of Hunter Biden’s business association with Chairman Ye Jianming of CEFC China Energy, a former Chinese energy tycoon with connections to the Chinese Communist Party. In all, Ye Jianming’s various businesses sent almost $5 million to Hunter Biden through Hudson West III, as Just the News previously reported. Hunter Biden’s now-defunct plea deal confirmed many of these payments.
By the fall of 2018, Hunter Biden was receiving his last payments from the Ye Jianming-connected business venture. In March of that year, Ye was abruptly detained by Chinese authorities and disappeared shortly after his energy conglomerate had promised to acquire an over $9 billion stake in Russian oil company Rosneft, and after Ye had given the Biden family millions of dollars.
The committee’s release of these new bank documents purporting to show President Biden benefitting personally from Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings follows the release of a $40,000 check that James Biden provided to his brother, Joe, as a “loan repayment” in 2017. The committee traced this payment from from a CEFC-linked company to Hudson West III. Eventually, the money ended up in James Biden’s Lion Hall, where his wife withdrew the funds and wrote a personal check to her brother-in-law, Just the News previously reported.
Neither the White House nor Hunter Biden’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, responded to a request for comment from Just the News.
The White House has publicly pushed back on the Oversight Committee’s inquiry into the President and his family’s business deals.
Hunter Biden’s lawyer told The Washington Post that the $1,380 recurring payments to Joe Biden were compensation for Hunter Biden’s use of a 2018 Ford Raptor truck that his father had bought.
“There Chairman Comer goes again - reheating what is old as new to try to revive his sham of an investigation,” Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell said on Monday, according to The Washington Post. “The truth is Hunter’s father helped him when he was struggling financially due to his addiction and could not secure credit to finance a truck. When Hunter was able to, he paid his father back and took over the payments himself.”
There is evidence in Hunter Biden’s emails to back up Lowell’s assertion that the $1380 recurring payments were sent to Joe Biden as reimbursement for use of his truck. In an email in January 2019 from Hunter Biden’s assistant, the Ford Raptor is listed on a list of the younger Biden’s bills.
“Ford Raptor - Reimbursement to JRB - $1380,” the list of bills reads, using a common family abbreviation for the family patriarch, Joseph Robinette Biden.
You can read the email of bills below:
Even if these payments were legitimate reimbursements, the new evidence released by the Oversight Committee further illuminates the intertwined finances of the Biden family that include loans between family members, repaid by funds directly from a Chinese company.
In this case, those funds appeared to have been sent to Hunter Biden’s business account directly from a joint venture with Chinese entities—one that was shutting down after his Chinese energy tycoon business partner was detained in China for unexplained reasons.
The Oversight Committee promised to continue its investigation.
“We’ve revealed how Joe Biden received checks from his family that were funded by the Bidens’ influence peddling schemes – with China no less,” Chairman Comer said in his press release.
“The House Oversight Committee continues to investigate Joe Biden’s involvement in his family’s domestic and international business schemes at a rapid pace,” he continued. “We will continue to uncover the facts and provide transparency about the findings of our investigation.”
Steven Richards
Source: https://justthenews.com/accountability/political-ethics/hunter-bidens-direct-payments-father-coincided-chinese-transfers
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