WASHINGTON — A key Biden family business associate appeared at the Capitol Friday for questioning in the impeachment inquiry into alleged corruption by President Biden.
Rob Walker signaled in a prepared opening statement that he intended to claim that Biden, 81, did nothing wrong in connection to the foreign ventures of first son Hunter Biden and first brother James Biden — but Republicans came armed with detailed questions about his inner knowledge of those ventures.
Walker distributed to Hunter, James and first daughter-in-law Hallie Biden millions of dollars from China and Romania during and immediately after Joe Biden’s vice presidency.
“President Biden — while in office or as a private citizen — was never involved in any of the business activities we pursued. Any statement to the contrary is simply false,” Walker was to contend in his remarks
“In business, the opportunities we pursued together were varied, valid, well-founded, and well within the bounds of legitimate business activities,” the statement added.
Republicans were prepared to ask Walker what services were provided in exchange for the lucrative ventures — following statements from other former Biden family associates that Joe Biden was indeed in communication with his family’s associates and that his relatives were effectively selling access.
Walker’s best-known role in the Biden family enterprises was distributing more than $1 million to Hunter from corrupt Romanian businessman Gabriel Popoviciu between November 2015 and May 2017 — even as VP Biden railed against corruption in that country — and passing on more than $1 million to Hunter, James and Hallie Biden from an affiliate of Chinese state-linked CEFC China Energy beginning in March 2017.
In each case, Walker received about $3 million from the foreign party and then appeared to keep one-third of the amount for himself before passing a third to the Bidens and another third to partner James Gilliar.
One of the most potentially significant lines of questioning pertains to when exactly the CEFC relationship started — as the money began to flow fewer than two months after Joe Biden left the vice presidency.
Republicans believe the CEFC-Biden family relationship began as early as 2015 and were expected to ask Walker if compensation was accruing toward the end of the Obama-Biden administration.
Joe Biden allegedly met twice with his family’s partners in the CEFC venture, according to another associate in the deal, Tony Bobulinski — and was penciled in for a 10% cut in a May 2017 email written by Gilliar, who used the nickname “the big guy” for the elder Biden.
Joe Biden’s potential vengeance was threatened in a July 2017 text message from Hunter to a China-based CEFC associate, in which Hunter wrote he was “sitting here with my father,” according to a message released by IRS whistleblowers.
Photos from Hunter’s abandoned laptop show he was at his dad’s Wilmington, Del., home on the day he wrote that message, but the tax-enforcement whistleblowers say the Justice Department blocked them from getting cellphone location data to prove whether Joe Biden was actually there.
Later that year, an email referred to Joe Biden as a participant on a call about CEFC’s attempt to purchase US natural gas.
The Romania venture, meanwhile, is one of the least-studied of the Biden family’s controversial foreign dealings and is a rare case where there’s no existing evidence of Joe Biden directly interacting with the individual paying his relatives.
There is smoke, however, that Biden family critics have noted that hint at potential vice presidential involvement. For example, they note that Hunter Biden referred Popoviciu to former FBI director Louis Freeh to challenge a corruption case against him — and Freeh called Hunter in July 2015, just two hours before Hunter was scheduled to meet with his dad, according to laptop records.
Hunter flew to Romania on Nov. 15, 2016, for a two-day trip to represent Popoviciu before the National Anticorruption Directorate. Two days after his return, Hunter had a “breakfast with dad” on his schedule.
Other Biden family business partners have outlined an array of Joe Biden’s links to his family dealings.
Former Hunter Biden associate Devon Archer testified in July that Joe Biden was on speaker phone for about 20 foreign business meetings and that the sitting VP dined twice in Georgetown with his son’s Russian, Ukrainian and Kazakhstani patrons.
Archer further testified that Joe Biden had coffee during a 2013 visit to Beijing with one of Hunter’s colleagues incoming CEO of Chinese state-backed BHR Partners Jonathan Li, before later greeting Li on the phone during a subsequent meeting and writing college recommendation letters for Li’s children.