WASHINGTON — President Biden said Wednesday he had nothing to do with son Hunter’s threatening WhatsApp text message to a Chinese businessman — in which the scion said the elder Biden was in the room and expecting action.
“How involved were you in your son’s Chinese shakedown text message?” The Post asked Biden on the White House lawn as he departed for a day-trip to Chicago.
The 80-year-old president smiled broadly and turned his head as if to accept a question from another reporter — a tactic he’s used before to duck difficult queries.
“Were you sitting there — were you involved?” The Post pressed.
“No I wasn’t and I don’t —,” Biden began to answer, pausing as another reporter shouted a question about Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Were you?” The Post asked again.
“No!” Biden shouted.
It was the president’s first comment on the bombshell July 30, 2017, missive revealed by IRS supervisory agent Gary Shapley to the House Ways and Means Committee, which released it last Thursday after Hunter, 53, reached a probation-only plea deal following what Shapley and a second IRS whistleblower describe as a Justice Department coverup.
White House spokespeople Karine Jean-Pierre and John Kirby repeatedly refused to comment on Biden’s involvement in the text message — or his whereabouts on the day in question — last week at a contentious briefing with reporters.
The WhatsApp message to CEFC employee and translator Raymond Zhao appears to have set in motion one of the Biden family’s largest foreign income streams.
Hunter wrote, according to Shapley: “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. 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.”
CEFC, a reputed cog in Beijing’s “Belt and Road” initiative, reportedly sent $100,000 to Hunter’s law firm Owasco on Aug. 4, 2017, less than a week after the threatening text message.
CEFC also wired $5 million to the firm Hudson West III on Aug. 8, 2017, according to a 2020 report by two Republican-led Senate committees.
That entity in turn paid nearly $4.8 million in “consulting fees” to Owasco over the following 13 months, the report said.
First brother James Biden also was involved in the CEFC deal and a May 2017 email penciled in Joe Biden, referred to by former Hunter Biden business partners Tony Bobulinski and James Gilliar as the “big guy,” for a 10% cut.
Bobulinski says he met with Joe Biden to discuss the CEFC venture and an October 2017 email identifies Joe Biden as a participant on a call about CEFC’s attempt to purchase US natural gas.
The Biden family’s interactions with CEFC appear to have started as early as 2015 — on the heels of another Chinese government-linked joint venture called BHR Partners, which Hunter launched in 2013 just 12 days after joining his father aboard Air Force Two for an official trip to Beijing.
Joe Biden met BHR CEO Jonathan Li during that trip.
The July 30, 2017, text message appears to have been sent while both Hunter and Joe Biden were in Wilmington, Delaware.
Hunter posed in four pictures with a pair of female family members in Joe Biden’s 1967 Corvette Stingray on the same evening, according to metadata obtained from his abandoned laptop — and a social media post from two days prior suggests that Joe Biden was also at home in Wilmington that weekend.
Hunter Biden’s attorney Chris Clark did not dispute the authenticity of the text message, but said Friday afternoon, “Any verifiable words or actions of my client, in the midst of a horrible addiction, are solely his own and have no connection to anyone in his family.”
“A close examination of the document released publicly yesterday by a very biased individual raises serious questions over whether it is what he claims it to be,” Clark said, without refuting any specific details. “It is dangerously misleading to make any conclusions or inferences based on this document.”
White House counsel’s office spokesman Ian Sams, who is the designated point person for Hunter Biden-related matters, did not directly address the text message implicating the president, but said last Friday, “As we have said many times before, the President was not in business with his son.”
The IRS whistleblowers said the Justice Department denied their requests to look further into Hunter’s texts or obtain their location data, with some federal prosecutors suggesting the first son may have been lying about his father being present when he sent the text to Zhao.
Shapley, who led the Hunter Biden tax investigation for more than three years, testified that he was told not to focus on Joe Biden’s potential role in the foreign dealings and potential related crimes.
The IRS supervisor and a subordinate, who has remained anonymous, told the House Ways and Means Committee that Delaware US Attorney David Weiss was blocked by Biden appointees from bringing serious tax charges against Hunter Biden in Southern California and Washington, DC, contradicting Attorney General Merrick Garland’s claims that Weiss would have autonomy to bring charges.
The tax agents said that Hunter failed to pay $2.2 million in federal taxes on $8.3 million in largely foreign-sourced income from 2014 to 2019.
Hunter wrote in emails retrieved from his former laptop that he had to give “half” of his income to Joe Biden, and the House Oversight Committee in May identified nine Biden family members who allegedly received foreign income.
In addition to China, there’s evidence Joe Biden interacted with his relatives’ associates from Mexico, Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine, according to records from Hunter’s abandoned laptop, photos and witness recollections.