President Joe Biden's repeated claims of ignorance regarding his son's dubiously purposed and profitable foreign business deals involving countries, companies, and culprits that are hostile to U.S. interests is proving to be a barnyard of malarkey.
That was already obvious from a late 2018 telephone message from then VP Biden to Hunter found on his "laptop from hell" regarding a New York Times article involving previous business dealings with Ye Jianming, a Chinese tycoon who then headed a now bankrupt China Energy Company (CEFC) in 2016.
During 2017 and 2018, CEFC had paid Hunter and his uncle James Biden $4.8 million for purported "legal and advisory work," gifted Hunter with a diamond ring estimated to be worth about $80,000, and earmarked 10% of a much larger deal to be "held by [Hunter] for the big guy [Joe]."
Joe Biden is heard saying, "I thought the article released online, it's going to be printed tomorrow in the Times, was good," Biden continued. "I think you're clear. And anyway, if you get a chance, give me a call, I love you."
One of Ye's top lieutenants, Patrick Ho, a person Hunter had accidentally recorded himself referring to as the "F---ing spy chief of China," was convicted in New York of bribing African officials to help Iran evade oil sanctions.
As documented by a Fox News Digital review, it is clear that the 2018 voice message wasn't the first or only evidence that Joe knew about Hunter's numerous foreign pay-for-access influence peddling operations leveraging his dad's vice presidential position.
An entry in Hunter's personal diary obtained by the New York Post shows that Joe met with former Colombia President Andrés Pastrana Arango and Eric Schwerin, the past president of Hunter's since-dissolved Rosemont Seneca Partners, at Joe's Naval Observatory residence on March 2, 2012.
Just months earlier, that firm had entered a contract with OAS, a Brazilian construction company with Colombian interests.
We're suppose to believe that Joe had no conversations with his son about his business during a December 2013 Beijing trip together aboard Air Force Two after Hunter later admitted to The New Yorker having introduced Joe to his business partner Jonathan Li who ran a Chinese private equity fund, Bohai Capital.
Ten days after returning, Hunter's Rosemont entities firm inked a $1 billion deal with the Communist state-owned Bank of China which was later increased to $1.5 billion.
Obama White House visitor logs and photographs on a press briefing room tour with Hunter show that Joe met with two of his son's Mexican business associates — Miguel Alemán Velasco and Miguel Alemán Magnani — on Feb. 26, 2014.
An Oct. 30, 2015, email reveals that Hunter arranged a video conference with his father and Carlos Slim, a Mexican billionaire with whom Hunter was seeking to do business.
Photos published by The Daily Mail on Nov. 19, 2015, less than a month after the video conference, show Slim, Velasco and Magnani meeting with Joe, Hunter, and Hunter's business partner and family friend Jeff Cooper at the vice presidential Washington residence.
Documents on Hunter's laptop indicate that Hunter and Cooper were in talks with Slim, Velasco and Magnani at that time about investing in a Mexican oil company.
Hunter invited Magnani in a Feb. 24, 2016, email to greet his father upon their arrival together in Mexico City aboard Air Force Two, but also accused him of going silent on their business partnership despite Hunter having "brought every single person you have ever asked me to bring to the F'ing White House and the Vice President's house."
A July 24, 2018, Hunter text message to Cooper confirmed he had spoken to his father about Slim, and was still hopeful about doing a deal.
Hunter's laptop records show that Joe also attended a dinner with Hunter's business associates from Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Russia at the Café Milano in Washington, D.C., on April 16, 2015.
The guest list included Vadym Pozharskyi, an executive at Ukrainian oil and gas company Burisma Holdings, where Hunter served as a no-show board member and the late Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov whose billionaire wife Yelena Baturina had wired $3.5 million to his Rosemont firm on Feb. 14, 2014.
The day after the dinner Hunter received an email from Burisma's Pozharskyi (who later reportedly paid Joe and Hunter each $5 million) that read, "Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together."
Hunter's guest list for the dinner Joe attended also included former Kazakhstan Prime Minister Karim Massimov and Kazakh oligarch Kenes Rakishev (appearing alongside Joe and Hunter in a photograph posted online) at a time when Hunter was trying to broker an oil deal between Burisma and a Chinese energy company located in that country.
Fast forward now to Hunter's recently IRS whistleblower-released July 30, 2017, WhatsApp message shakedown of Henry Zhao, a Chinese business executive with known Communist Party connections, threatening: "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."
Joe tersely answered "no" when asked by a Fox News reporter last Monday if he lied about knowing about Hunter's business dealings.
Contrary laptop, bank record and whistleblower evidence under investigation by multiple U.S. House committees indicates otherwise.
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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