The "Be good to my boy," advice the former vice president allegedly offered on a speakerphone with Russia’s second wealthiest woman, Elena Baturina and her former Moscow mayor husband, seems to pretty much discredit infamously repeated claims that Joe Biden knew nothing about Hunter’s alleged foreign influence peddling business deals.
This May 4, 2014, telephone exchange was reported in Feb. 23, 2024 transcript testimony offered under oath to the U.S. House Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means impeachment inquiry investigators by Hunter’s former business partner Jason Galanis.
Galanis was interviewed while serving a 14-year federal prison term for a fraudulent bond scheme involving Burnham and Company, a Hunter-associated company that sought to use an indigenous Indian tribe’s pension bonds to advance a "roll-up" strategy to buy up financial firms and merge them into a larger one.
According to court testimony, Hunter’s name was reportedly promoted as a selling point in the scheme by Devon Archer, a close friend, Burnham and Rosemont partner, and fellow board member at the corrupt Ukraine energy company, Burisma.
Former Vice President Biden famously threatened to withhold a billion U.S. dollars unless the government prosecutor who was investigating the company, was fired.
Archer had previously testified, "Burisma would have gone out of business if it didn’t have the brand attached to it."
Whereas Archer was convicted in Jan. 2018 by a federal Manhattan jury for his part in the pension scheme, the judge later overturned that verdict.
Hunter, who according to The Wall Street Journal, had an office at the New York headquarters of an asset-managing company that was supposed to be part of the roll-up, was never charged along with Galanis and Archer.
Archer, who was also present during the alleged Joe Biden speakerphone conversation with Elena Baturina and her husband, has offered separate sworn testimony to the House impeachment committee that Hunter had put his vice president father on speakerphone during business meetings with investors in China, Mexico, and Kazakhstan more than 20 times to sell "the [Biden] brand."
Commenting on his suspicions of prosecutorial irregularities leading solely to his own incarceration, Galanis observed:
"As I reviewed the facts, I realized the prosecutors in the SDNY, Southern District of New York, had gone lightly on Devon Archer and had not indicted Hunter Biden at all, despite the then-available documentations that we were partners; we were involved in the decision-making that involved illegal self-dealing; and that all of us had financially benefited from these schemes.
"In fact, Hunter Biden and Devon's company, Rosemont Seneca Bohai, received $15 million of the tribal bond fraudulent scheme to be invested in the Burnham Group.
"I believe the SDNY's prosecution strategy was intended to protect Hunter Biden and, ultimately, Vice President Biden."
Referring to name-brand value added by selling Washington access to Russia, China, and the former Soviet Union nation Kazakhstan as the "Biden lift," Galanis stated: "Our goal — that is, Hunter Biden, Devon Archer, and myself — was to make billions, not millions."
Galanis told House committee investigators that whereas access to Joe Biden came with an $18 million business transaction, ties to China pursued a somewhat different immediate priority.
As he described it, "The point was less the money and more the Chinese participation."
Galanis said, "The exchange, the quid pro quo, if you would, was if they invest in us, our financial platform gets bigger, more solidified. They get the benefit of Vice President Biden when he exits office to sit on their board. Both parties get something in the exchange."
Regarding the Baturina conversation event, Galanis recalled prearrangements to gather in an area of the restaurant because Hunter was going to call his father.
He then reported being "stunned" actually hearing the vice president’s voice on a speakerphone to lend prestige.
Hunter reportedly said "Hello," and "Hold on Pops," then said, "I'm here with our friends I told you were coming to town, and we wanted to say hello."
After some pleasantries, Joe ended the conversation, saying, "OK you be good to my boy," whereby Hunter responded by saying, "Everything is good, and we're moving ahead."
Former Hunter business partner Tony Bobulinski corroborated Galanis and Archer claims that Hunter’s speakerphone calls were engineered so Joe could impress would-be clients, "enabling the transaction."
Bobulinski had also confirmed that a 10% cut earmarked for the "big guy" indeed referred to Hunter’s father as part of a 2017 deal with CEFC, a corrupt Chinese energy company.
As Galanis noted, CEFC was also pursued as an investor in the fraudulent Indian pension bond roll-up scam, stating, "I agreed with Hunter and Devon that the Burnham & Company would be enhanced by forming a partnership" with a "$300 billion Chinese financial services company closely connected to the Chinese Communist Party."
Bank records secured by the House Oversight Committee show that on March 1, 2017 — less than two months after Joe Biden left office as Barack Obama’s vice president — State Energy HK Limited — a company affiliated with CEFC transferred over $1.3 million to Hunter, James Biden, Hallie Biden, an unknown Biden, and their companies through Biden family associate Rob Walker.
Meanwhile, House Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means impeachment inquiry investigators have thus far found more than $20 million from foreign sources allegedly paid to Biden family business associates through more than 20 shell companies with no identified services rendered.
Nope, nothing to see here so long as Democrats refuse to look.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.
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