Yesterday we took a brief gander at China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), an infrastructure project on a grand scale meant to ensure China has access to the natural resources it needs and to facilitate trade going the other way.
In a serendipitous development in the Hunter Biden saga, yesterday the Washington Post published a story accepting as fact the reporting the New York Post did back in October 2020 based on the contents of a laptop that Hunter Biden left in a repair shop.
(This would be the same reporting the fools at Facebook and Twitter tried to stop from spreading. In addition to the reporting the New York Post did, NY Post columnist Miranda Devine wove all the disparate threads into a coherent story of corruption in her book Laptop From Hell.)
The initial reporting on the laptop focused on Hunter Biden’s involvement in Ukraine and his position on the board of Burisma even though he had no experience in Energy etc… That was not the extent of Hunter Biden’s money-grubbing, not by a long shot. He was also chasing deals in China, and the Washington Post story focuses on the China angle.
The deal was years in the making, the culmination of forging contacts, hosting dinners, of flights to and from China. But on Aug. 2, 2017, signatures were quickly affixed, one from Hunter Biden, the other from a Chinese executive named Gongwen Dong.
Within days, a new Cathay Bank account was created. Within a week, millions of dollars started to change hands.
Within a year, it would all begin to collapse.
While many aspects of Hunter Biden’s financial arrangement with CEFC China Energy have been previously reported and were included in a Republican-led Senate report from 2020, a Washington Post review confirmed many of the key details and found additional documents showing Biden family interactions with Chinese executives.
Over the course of 14 months, the Chinese energy conglomerate and its executives paid $4.8 million to entities controlled by Hunter Biden and his uncle, according to government records, court documents and newly disclosed bank statements, as well as emails contained on a copy of a laptop hard drive that purportedly once belonged to Hunter Biden.
Of course, as the mention of the US Senate report points out, this was known some time ago. And not surprisingly Devine knew of it too. In this column, she reported on the gift of a diamond this Chinese company CEFC and its founder Ye Jianming gave Hunter Biden, and in this column, Tony Bobulinski, who was brought in to help manage the CEFC deal, put Joe Biden himself in the picture.
This also obliquely touches on our look at the BRI. Devine describes CEFC this way.
“Hunter was great,” Gilliar wrote to Walker. “True sheikh of Washington.”
He emailed Hunter a few weeks later: “It has been made clear to me that CEFC wish to engage in further business relations with our group.”
Gilliar knew CEFC was the capitalist arm of President Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative to spread China’s influence — and debt traps — across the world. No Chinese company executed its goals more ardently than CEFC and its young chairman, who was dubbed the “Belt and Road billionaire” in the press.
Chairman Ye had built his provincial energy company into a Fortune 500 colossus virtually overnight, an achievement described by Chinese news agency Caixin as “another great enigma in the miraculous world of Chinese business.” He enjoyed the support of President Xi and was former deputy secretary general of the government’s propaganda arm, the China Association for International Friendly Contacts.
The text of the US Senate report is here. Of course, since it was done under the auspices of the Republicans who still controlled the Senate at the time, it was easily dismissed as simply dutiful lapdogs of Putin eagerly slurping up whatever sweet nectar their masters in Moscow put before them and passing it along.
The thread starts with this quote from the executive summary of that report.
During the Obama administration, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States approved a transaction that gave control over Henniges, an American maker of anti vibration technologies with military applications, to a Chinese government owned aviation company and a China based investment firm with established ties to the Chinese government. One of the companies involved in the Henniges transaction was a billion dollar private investment fund called Bohai Harvest RST (BHR). BHR was formed in November 2013 by a merger between the Chinese government linked firm Bohai Capital and a company named Rosemont Seneca Partners. Rosemont Seneca was formed in 2009 by Hunter Biden, the son of then Vice President Joe Biden, by Chris Heinz, the stepson of former Secretary of State John Kerry, and others.
At the beginning of this relationship with CEFC Rosemont Seneca brought in the Thornton Group, a financial services firm familiar with Asia. The Senate report suggests the Thornton Group helped Hunter Biden get connected with Ye Jianming and the CEFC. And after that, deals with BHR began to develop.
The Senate report goes into some details, but the Washington Post story summarizes it this way…
The contract, signed on Aug. 2, 2017, stated that Hunter Biden would get a one-time retainer of $500,000 and would then receive a monthly stipend of $100,000, with his uncle James Biden getting $65,000 a month.
An unsigned copy of the agreement was found on the purported copy of Hunter Biden’s laptop hard drive. A signed copy was included with bank records provided to Grassley and reviewed by The Post. Under the 26-page agreement, they agreed to jointly pursue investments under a company named Hudson West III LLC.
The money began flowing almost immediately, with the first incoming wire of $5 million arriving on Aug. 8, 2017, according to documents found on the copy of Hunter Biden’s laptop and corroborated by identical bank statements that Grassley’s office obtained from Cathay Bank for an account jointly held by Hunter Biden and CEFC executives.
After expenses and personnel costs, the bulk of the money, about $4.8 million, was directed over a 14-month period, usually in increments of $165,000, to an account linked to Hunter Biden, the documents show. During that time period, about $1.4 million was transferred from Hunter’s account to the Lion Hall Group, the consulting firm that James Biden ran, according to other government records reviewed by The Post.
Again, Devine:
Less than two weeks after meeting Joe Biden, Bobulinski incorporated SinoHawk Holdings LLC, on May 15, 2017, having decided against Hunter’s suggestion they call it CEFC America. It would be a global investment firm seeded with $10 million of Chinese money that would buy projects in the US and around the world “in global and/or domestic infrastructure, energy, financial services and other strategic sectors,” said the contract he had drawn up.
SinoHawk would be 50 percent owned by Ye Jianming, chairman of CEFC, through a Delaware-incorporated CEFC entity, Hudson West IV LLC. The other 50 percent would be owned by Oneida Holdings LLC, another Delaware firm set up by Bobulinski.
And, 10% of Oneida was meant for the “big guy”, who according to Bobulinski was Cornpop himself, Joe Biden.
The CEFC deal ultimately fell apart. Ye Jianming was purportedly arrested in China. I have no way of knowing if the arrest was real, if there was a behind the scenes power struggle over who would control these lucrative energy contracts or if he was just taken out of the limelight for awhile.
Hunter Biden was not the lynchpin of China’s BRI efforts, but they were happy to slosh some dollars his way because of who his father is, and his father’s job.
For the last six years, virtually all of the media assured us that Trump’s sleazy real estate deals, done years before his entry into politics, even though technically legal, were worthy of intense examination and also disqualified him from the presidency.
Watch for the squalid rationalizations from the usual suspects about Joe Biden’s sleazy influence peddling to begin immediately.
FWIW, until he became Obama’s veep, Biden was known as one of the poorer senators, lots of debt, little capital.
Jeff, this can’t be right. I have been confidently assured on other threads that the chain of custody of the laptop remains unproven; only one or two emails have been authenticated; PDFs are not reliable evidence; and the data was changed after the FBI took custody proving it’s all disinformation by Russia! Russia! Russia!
The skepticism of Hunter’s laptop had a lot to do with the timing — arriving during a highly contested presidential election, the first one after the Russian hack of the Clinton campaign — and the odd nature of how it was located as well as the people associated with the “dump”. Moreover, the dump of emails was missing the metadata and email headers which make the origination and targets easier to identify and locate. I still have my doubts about the entire story — it seemed to me that the emails came from one place — perhaps illegally — and the laptop’s origins from the computer store. Regardless, the entire story needs to be investigated including Giuliani’s role in the operation. But it need not be a hit job.
MP, the usual suspects are ALREADY screeching that EVERYTHING took place when Jugead was a private citizen and therefore unassailable.
There is nothing illegal about any of this and at best he may have broken some reporting rules. I doubt any indictments, let alone convictions come out of all this.
Trump gave his kids White House jobs and they also had all kinds of wheeling and dealing going on while in office for personal gain, and nothing happened there, so why is this anything at all?
This is flimsier than “But Her Emails”.
Lol, troll thinks if he just posts enough times on SITD “there’s nothing illegal here”, it will just go away.
Sorry hon, if the lamestream media is covering a story that is bad for Dhimmis, you know its for real.
The complaint about the evidence of official corruption obtained from Hunter’s laptop has nothing to do with criminal convictions.
The complaint is the Deep State and its allies in the media suppressed the evidence of official corruption obtained from Hunter’s laptop until it was too late for the voting public to act on the evidence.
Former intelligence agents, FBI investigators, and the most respected newspapers in the nation confidently assured the voting public that it was all lies, all Russian disinformation, and that nothing had been proven.
But it was all true and they knew it at the time. The intelligence agents, the FBI, the media, they were, themselves, lying. They lied to the public to deceive the voters about the evidence of official corruption. They lied to help the corrupt official win the election. The Russians didn’t skew this election, the Deep State and media did.
But for Progressives, that’s a feature, not a bug. The ends justify the means, which is why they shrug and ask, “What difference, at this point, does it make?”
Emery, which of Trump’s kids are drug addicted whoremongers who’ve never held an honest job in their lives? Which of them are that, and signed multimillion dollar contracts with foreign companies right after their dad visited there?
Answer; none of them, and they worked for their dad free of charge, and actually Trump’s properties took a serious hit during his presidency. You may dislike Trump all you want, but let’s go on real evidence, please.
The Russians didn’t skew this election, the Deep State and media did
They told us they did and they’re proud of it too
But for Progressives, that’s a feature, not a bug. The ends justify the means, which is why they shrug and ask, “What difference, at this point, does it make?”
Exactly true, JD. And moreover, that response is intended to rub salt in the wound because what’ya gonna do about it, Republicans? Unless and until Republicans stop being conservatives and start being reactionaries, this shite is gonna continue.
Hunter Biden’s emails didn’t dominate mainstream media because, at least so far, they didn’t have the goods (linking Joe Biden). The real objection from conservatives is that they didn’t get the narrative they liked out of the mainstream media.
SiTD has the moderation force field dialed up to 11 today 🚨
Test
Imagine how many other Hunter Bidens there are in DC and your state capitol. This isn’t a conservative versus progressive thing, it is universal.
Did your heart give a little hitch when you heard Joe Biden say that Hunter was the smartest guy that he knew? Mine did.
Shit for brains Emery always ignores the DemoCommie’s nepotism, such as lying quack FAUXci’s wife working for the NIH, Merrick Garland’s old lady works for the so called election integrity (read: cheating) and all of the snakes in Pedo Joe’s cabal that are married to media types, you know, to insure the narrative. Thankfully the GOP derailed traitor Jamie Raskin’s wife from getting a high profile position. And, let’s not even get started on crooked skank Hillary or the Black Messiah’s money transfers and corruption.
^
• Unethical: Participating in the decision on a case that would lead to the disclosure of your spouse’s inflammatory and incriminating texts.
• Unethical and foolish: Not just participating but dissenting 8-1
Clarence Thomas was the only vote to block the Jan 6 committee from getting Trump’s papers. Mark Meadows filed a supporting brief. And Ginni’s texts to Meadows were at stake.
147 Republicans in Congress, and the wife of a Republican Supreme Court Justice coordinated to prevent the lawful transfer of power.
Imagine if it had been the spouse of a Democrat appointed justice. Democrats should hammer this daily. The GOP would.
The real story about Hunter Biden is that the current president hasn’t fired the FBI director, called it a hoax, or tried to obstruct the investigation.
BB wrote: Which of [members of Trump’s family] them are that, and signed multimillion dollar contracts with foreign companies right after their dad visited?
“The Chinese government granted a total of 41 trademarks to companies linked to Ivanka Trump by April of 2019—and the trademarks she applied for after her father became president got approved about 40% faster than those she requested before Donald Trump’s victory”
Ivanka Trump Wins China Trademarks, Then Her Father Vows to Save ZTE
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/28/business/ivanka-trump-china-trademarks.html
Jared Kushner’s Family Got Half a Billion in Loans After Key White House Meetings ~ Vanity Fair
This was a clear abuse of Kushner’s position. Added to his unauthorized ‘diplomacy’ and his questionable financial dealings with foreign interests. It just doesn’t make sense that Kushner could walk out on his “house of cards” real estate empire while under intense pressure, especially regarding the Fifth Avenue property that has been widely reported, to take an unsalaried full-time job in the White House.
Moderation is lit 🔥 today..
It should be noted that the statement Mac Isaac’s attorney, Brian Della Rocca, makes on how Isaac recovered the data from the original Macbook Pro is another piece of this puzzle that calls into question the idea that the original laptop was actually Hunter Bidens. Having recovered data from several broken laptops, you don’t do it by booting up the device and then, “transfer as much as he could before the computer shut down”. You open up the damaged laptop and pull out the harddrive. You can then copy the drive using an external drive mount and/or cable. What actual computer repair person does not have a hard drive reader?!
Nothing suspicious about the timing of the Steele Dossier!
After almost two years of being a lead item on the mainstream news, the media seems to have forgotten all about the Steele Dossier.
Let’s build a little timeline about what we know is true.
The FBI, the head of the f’n FBI, leaked the Steele Dossier to Buzzfeed, knowing that it would then allow him to talk about to the media, as a “reaction” to the leak.
The Steele Dossier was compiled by a Trump-hating foreign national. To build it, he relied on contacts in Russian intelligence and a shady cutout, a Russian ex-pat named Igor Danchenko. Danchenko got his stories about Trump from a Democrat political operative named Chuck Dolan.
This is a far worse scandal than Watergate.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/11/04/steele-source-arrested-519498
Mueller did his job. It was sabotaged by those in power. There’s a new sheriff in town.
The Steele dossier was a collection of information, which all in all, was more accurate than the intelligence reports Bush and Cheney used to justify a war in Iraq.
This is a much better analysis of the Steele Dossier, with out the whitewashing of what was absolutely found to be true in that dossier.
https://www.lawfareblog.com/steele-dossier-retrospective
Whataboutism won’t work in this case, E.
Everybody knew about business dealings of Donald Jr and Jared and Ivanka – the media wouldn’t shut up about them.
Nobody knew about the business dealings of Hunter – the media wouldn’t open up about them.
It’s not the business dealings that matter. It’s government officials working with media to hide proof of the business dealings that matters.
Emery, you are aware that in civilized countries, getting a trademark is pretty simple and costs about $50 to file the paperwork, right? So exactly what you’re saying with “they got trademarks faster” is pretty obscure.
And the second one? OK, first of all, Vanity Fair is not the world’s best source–you really ought to have a more reliable source if the evidence is reliable–and all it is is the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.
Imagine how many other Hunter Bidens there are in DC and your state capitol.
I believe one of those other ones has the last name of Romney.
Now we have ol’ Slow Joe publically insisting that his son, Hunter, currently the subject of a Justice Department investigation, is innocent and has doing nothing wrong.
It is kind of fun, in a dark way, watching Joe Biden tear his own presidency to shreds.
Fox News interview last Sunday with Trump when asked what he’d do differently with the Ukraine crisis (quote):
“Well, what would I do is I would, we would, we have tremendous military capability and what we can do without planes to be honest with you, without 44 year old planes, what we can do is enormous and we should be doing it and we should be helping them to survive and they’re doing an amazing job” ~ Donald Trump
Notice nothing but run-on sentences in this word salad? The complete absence of coherence? Now, just imagine how he’d conduct himself were he president during this crisis and shudder.
Yo, Emery, will all due disrespect, playing “Conan the Grammarian” hardly qualifies as a good critique. So this once, Trump made no sense. He’s got a lot of catching up to do before he approaches Biden or Harris in this regard, though.
Fucking rAT…did you say word salad?
Really?
Hahahahaha! 😂
Who cares about pornographic selfies of a private individual when the Republicans in congress are having cocaine fueled orgies! I mean, if you believe Rudy’s story, you have to believe Rep. Cawthorn’s tales.
.
Emery, you do realize that none less than the NY Times and Washington Post have finally said “yes, these things are real and troubling”, right? And that there is a substantial difference between “he said/she said” and thousands of files establishing business relationships built apparently on the authority of the former Vice President and current President, right?
If laws were broke — then prosecute. If not — it’s all a “political witch hunt” (sorry couldn’t resist).
The average Americans commit 3 felonies each day:https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704471504574438900830760842
Emery is a great believer in “prosecutorial discretion,” as long as the prosecutor agrees with Emery the Great.