The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee claimed Wednesday he was “not aware” of any meetings President Biden had with his son Hunter’s foreign business associates — despite overwhelming evidence, including sworn testimony, to the contrary.
“There were no meetings with the president,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) told The Post during a break from the panel’s eight-hour interview with the first son.
The Post had pressed Raskin about past reports and witness statements confirming Biden met foreign nationals who struck business deals with Hunter for coffee, lunch and dinner during and after his time as vice president.
“Are we meeting right now?” Raskin asked in response. “A meeting like that, I suppose, where somebody says ‘hello’ and shakes their hand.”
“You’ll check out the transcript and you can see if you believe that,” he added. “I’m not aware of any meetings that took place with the president of the United States or the vice president of the United States or even Joe Biden as a private citizen.”
In December 2013, Hunter Biden joined his father aboard Air Force Two for a trip to Beijing, where he introduced the then-vice president to Jonathan Li, the incoming CEO of BHR Partners, a Chinese private equity firm.
Hunter’s former business partner, Devon Archer, testified July 31 to the House Oversight Committee about the trip, adding that Joe Biden later spoke on the phone with Li — and wrote college recommendation letters for Li’s children shortly after leaving the VP office.
The first son held a 10% stake in BHR at least through the first year of his father’s term as president.
Archer further testified that Joe Biden attended two dinners at Café Milano in Washington with Hunter’s Kazakhstani, Ukrainian and Russian associates in 2014 and 2015 — even pausing to snap a picture on one of those occasions.
During the April 16, 2015, dinner, a source previously told the Post, the vice president ate with the other guests and stayed for about 40 minutes before mugging for the camera.
Sources confirmed the other attendees included then-Kazakhstani Prime Minister Karim Massimov, ex-Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov and his wife, Russian oligarch Yelena Baturina, who had wired $3.5 million the year before to Hunter’s investment firm, according to a 2020 report authored by Senate Republicans.
Another business partner, Rob Walker, testified to the Oversight panel on Jan. 26 that Joe Biden also met the chairman of Chinese government-linked energy company CEFC in March 2017 at the Four Seasons hotel in DC.
Walker received a $3 million payment from the Chinese firm shortly after the meeting, and another $5.1 million flowed later that year to accounts linked to Hunter and first brother James Biden, the 2020 Senate report found.
The second payment came within 10 days of Hunter sending a threatening text message to a CEFC translator that he was “sitting here with my father” and both wanted to know why a “commitment” had “not been fulfilled.”
“It is a mirage to believe that Hunter Biden was engaged in international business,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) told reporters during a break. “This was a bribe masquerading as an international business transaction.”
In addition to the in-person meetings, Archer testified that the president spoke with his son’s business associates more than 20 times on speakerphone.
“We’ve been hearing about these speakerphones in public settings for a long time now,” Raskin told reporters on Tuesday, dismissing that there was anything “illicit” in the common “practice of putting your mom or dad on the speakerphone.”
“Hunter Biden explained, I think to the resonance of a lot of people in the room on a bipartisan basis, that people do that,” he added. “People say, ‘Hey, dad, will you say hello to my friends?’”
Asked what value Hunter added to the foreign business ventures, Raskin responded: “He has served on multiple corporate boards. He’s been involved in lots of business. And he was an expert on corporate governance … so he rendered the value that people do.”
“I had no idea how many different boards he has served on — serious boards in serious capacities,” added Manhattan and Brooklyn Democratic Rep. Daniel Goldman. “He was appointed by President Bush to be on the board of Amtrak. He has a long history of doing a lot of board work, corporate governance work.”
“We’ve heard no evidence of treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors touching Joe Biden today,” Raskin said in summing. “This investigation is absolutely running on empty. It has been a comedy of errors from the beginning. And Hunter Biden has been very clear that his father was not involved in any way in his businesses, derived no profit from his businesses and rendered no official favors or benefits to any of his businesses. And no one has laid a glove on any of those statements.”