dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

Truth Seeker ID: b2c7e5 Hunter Biden and Corruption Sept. 23, 2020, 6:15 a.m. No.5523 🗄️.is 🔗kun >>5531

including Burisma, Ukraine, and China

Impact on U.S. Government Policy and Related Concerns

On Sept 23, 2020, the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs

U.S. Senate Committee on Finance released a 87-page report entitled '''Hunter Biden, Burisma,

and Corruption: The Impact on U.S. Government Policy and Related Concerns'''.

This GENERAL thread is for documentation, news, and discussion of that report and related matters.

The final report is available from the Senate website:

https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Ukraine%20Report_FINAL.pdf

GOP-led committees release interim report on Hunter Biden, Burisma probe

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/senate-committees-report-hunter-biden-burisma-probe

Truth Seeker ID: b2c7e5 Sept. 23, 2020, 6:26 a.m. No.5526 🗄️.is 🔗kun >>5528

Read: Senate GOP's controversial Biden report

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/517722-read-senate-gops-controversial-biden-report

Senate Report Details Hunter Biden’s Extensive Foreign Business Dealings — and Obama Officials’ Efforts to Distance From Him

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/senate-report-details-hunter-bidens-extensive-foreign-business-dealings-and-obama-officials-efforts-to-distance-themselves-from-it/

Hunter Biden Received Millions From Wife Of Ex-Moscow Mayor, Paid Suspects Allegedly Tied To Trafficking, Had Contacts With Chinese Military, Senate Report Alleges

https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-hunter-biden-received-millions-from-wife-of-ex-moscow-mayor-paid-suspects-allegedly-tied-to-trafficking-had-contacts-with-chinese-military-senate-report-alleges

>>5526

Text of

Senate Report Details Hunter Biden’s Extensive Foreign Business Dealings — and Obama Officials’ Efforts to Distance From Him

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/senate-report-details-hunter-bidens-extensive-foreign-business-dealings-and-obama-officials-efforts-to-distance-themselves-from-it/

Senate Republicans released a report Wednesday detailing the extensive business dealings that Hunter Biden pursued with politically-connected foreign nationals while his father Joe Biden was serving as vice president.

The 87-page interim report comes amid a months-long probe in which members of the Senate Homeland Security and Finance Committees and their staff reviewed more than 45,000 pages of Obama administration records and interviewed eight witnesses, many of whom are current or former U.S. officials.

“The Treasury records acquired by the Chairmen show potential criminal activity relating to transactions among and between Hunter Biden, his family, and his associates with Ukrainian, Russian, Kazakh and Chinese nationals,” the report reads. “In particular, these documents show that Hunter Biden received millions of dollars from foreign sources as a result of business relationships that he built during the period when his father was vice president of the United States and after.”

That Hunter Biden served on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings while his father was leading the Obama administration’s efforts in Ukraine is well-established, but the $50,000-per-month board seat was just one component of the younger Biden’s foreign ventures during the Obama years. According to Treasury Department records obtained by the committee, he also pursued business dealings with politically-connected Russian, Chinese, and Kazakh nationals.

In the course of his globe-trotting business career, Hunter Biden racked up more than $4 million in “questionable financial transactions” with well-connected foreigners. He partnered with Chinese businessmen connected to the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army, he took cash from the wife of the corrupt former mayor of Moscow, and he sent funds to Ukrainian and Russian nationals living in the U.S. that are “linked to what ‘appears to be an Eastern European prostitution or human trafficking ring,’” according to the report.

But it was only Hunter’s work for Burisma that caught the attention of Obama administration State Department officials, who said the role created “counterintelligence and extortion concerns.”

Acting Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine, George Kent warned vice president Joe Biden’s office in early 2015 that Hunter’s work for Burisma undermined the administrations’ anti-corruption efforts in the country, since the gas company’s owner Mykola Zlochevsky, who Kent described as an “odious oligarch” in his testimony, is famously corrupt.

“Furthermore, the presence of Hunter Biden on the Burisma board was very awkward for all U.S. officials pushing an anticorruption agenda in Ukraine,” Kent wrote in an email to his colleagues in 2016.

Kent told Joe Biden’s staff that “someone needed to talk to Hunter Biden, and he should [step] down from the board of Burisma,” according to the report. But it doesn’t appear Kent’s request was carried out, since Hunter remained on the board throughout the rest of Obama’s term.

U.S. Special Envoy and Coordinator for International Energy Affairs Amos Hochstein also raised concerns about Hunter’s work for Burisma with the vice president. But his complaints went unaddressed, according to the report.

“This investigation has illustrated the extent to which officials within the Obama administration ignored the glaring warning signs when the vice president’s son joined the board of a company owned by a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch,” the report’s executive summary stated.

While concerns over Hunter’s business dealings in Ukraine didn’t prompt any decisive action from the administration, they did reach the desk of Secretary of State John Kerry, contradicting his later claim that he was never aware that Hunter served on the Burisma board.

The day after Hunter joined the Burisma board in May 2014, Kerry’s stepson Christopher Heinz, who was a business partner of Hunter’s, emailed his father to inform him of Hunter’s appointment to the board and to distance himself from the decision. Kerry’s staff followed up with a briefing on the press inquiries prompted by Hunter’s board seat, according to their testimony before the committees.

Neither Kerry nor anyone else in the administration appears to have intervened to put a stop to the younger Biden’s influence peddling.

When asked by a reporter in 2019 whether he had any knowledge of Hunter’s work for Burisma, Kerry responded “I had no knowledge about any of that. None. No.”

Russia

Hunter Biden and his business partner Devon Archer joined with Heinz in 2009 to form the investment firm Rosemont Seneca. They then spun off a number of shell companies to accept funds from wealthy and politically-connected clients willing to pay for their “corporate and governmental affairs” expertise.

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One such client was Elena Baturina, wife of former Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov, who was fired in 2010 by then-Russian president Dmitry Medvedev over corruption allegations. Baturina became Russia’s first female billionaire after her plastics company received a number of lucrative public contracts with the city of Moscow while her husband was mayor.

“Luzhkov used his position as mayor to approve over 20 real estate projects that were built by a Baturina-owned construction company and ultimately generated multibillion-ruble profits for his family,” according to the report.

In February 2014, Baturina wired $3.5 million as part of a “consultancy agreement” to Rosemont Seneca Thornton LLC — a consortium consisting of Biden and Archer’s Rosemont Seneca and a Massachusetts-based company with offices in Beijing known as Thornton LLC.

Then, between May and December 2015 Baturina wired another $391,968.21 to an account linked to a company called BAK USA, a Buffalo, N.Y. based start up that manufactured tablet computers with the backing of unidentified Chinese investors. The majority of that nearly $400,000, totaling $241,797.14, flowed through the Rosemont Seneca Thornton account before arriving in the BAK USA account.

Kazakhstan

On April 22, 2014, as Joe Biden joined Prime Minister Arsemy Yasenyuk in Kyiv to speak with Ukrainian lawmakers about the recent Russian aggression in Crimea, a holding company owned by the son-in-law of a prominent Khazak politician wired Archer $142,300 through yet another shell company, Rosemont Seneca Bohai. A currency report obtained by the committee states that the payment was “For a Car.”

The holding company that purchased Archer a car is owned solely by Kenges Rakishev, the son-in-law of Imangali Tasmagambetov, who was then serving as the mayor of Kazakhstan’s capital city, Astana. Tasmagambetov, who himself previously served as prime minister of Kazakhstan, was reportedly a close confidant of then Kazahk president Nursultan Nazarbayev. It is unclear why, exactly, Archer was purchased a car, but Kazakhstan was in flux politically at the time due to dissension over how to respond to Russia’s provocation in Ukraine.

“Given Rakishev’s close connection to political leadership in Kazakhstan, the tense political situation, Hunter Biden’s longstanding relationship with Archer and involvement in transactions with Rosemont Seneca Bohai, and the fact that the payment was timed perfectly with Vice President Biden’s visit to Kyiv to discuss U.S. sanctions against Russia for the invasion of Crimea, the April 22, 2014 payment from Rakishev to Rosemont Seneca Bohai raises serious questions,” the report reads.

China

In order to sell their consulting services in China, Biden and Archer partnered with a Boston-based firm known as Thornton LLC. The firm advertises itself as “a cross-border capital intermediary” and counts a number of state-owned Chinese businesses among its clients, according to its website.

Through Thornton LLC, Hunter Biden and Archer formed business relationships with a number of wealth Chinese nationals who have connections the CCP and the People’s Liberation Army.

Many of Hunter Biden’s Chinese dealings flowed through Ye Jianming, the founder of CEFC China Energy Co. Ltd, a Chinese energy company that reported in excess of $33 billion in revenue in 2013. The company was acquired by the state in 2017 but even before that it “hired a number of former top officials from state owned energy companies” and had “layers of Communist Party committees across its subsidiaries — more than at many private Chinese companies,” according to Reuters.

Through Jianming’s company, Hunter Biden was introduced to the CCP elite and those businessmen who operate with their blessing.

Pictures from an April 2010 event in China posted by the Thornton Group show Biden standing alongside the general manager of the China Investment Corporation, the vice president of the China Life Asset Management Company, the general manager of the Postal Savings Bank, among other Chinese business tycoons.

Hunter Biden and Archer capitalized on those connections some two years later by partnering with Jonathan Li the CEO of the Chinese investment firm Bohai Capital, to form BHR, an investment firm specializing in connecting wealthy Chinese investors, and state entities, with overseas business opportunities. The Chinese government’s postal savings bank, its main development bank, and The Bank of China all invested in BHR. Months before the investors signed the documents committing to the fund, Hunter arranged for his father to meet Li briefly in the lobby of a Beijing hotel they were staying in after flying to China on Air Force II.

Hunter initially joined the BHR board in an unsalaried capacity but ultimately acquired a ten percent stake in the company in 2017.

Ye’s relationships were not confined to China’s business elite, he also had extensive connections to high-ranking members of the People’s Liberation Army, including one of the country’s leading propagandists, Wang Shu, the CEO of the China Huayi Broadcasting. While Ye was rubbing shoulders with Beijing’s elite, Hunter was busy trying to solicit American investment in his firm.

A subsidiary of ye’s company wired $100,000 to Biden’s law firm, Owasco, in August 2017. And, one month later, on the day that Ye’s firm announced it would acquire a $9.1 billion deal in the Russian oil company Rosneft, Hunter filed for a $100,000 line of credit with one of Ye’s business partners. Hunter, his uncle James, and James’s wife Sarah were all authorized as credit card users on the account. The foursome went on a spending spree, buying airline tickets, stays at expensive hotels and meals at top restaurants.

Ye’s company would eventually funnel $4.8 million to Biden’s law firm over the following year.

Joe Biden’s spokesman, Andrew Bates, suggested the entire investigation was a partisan distraction in response to the report.

“As the coronavirus death toll climbs and Wisconsinites struggle with joblessness, Ron Johnson has wasted months diverting the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee away from any oversight of the catastrophically botched federal response to the pandemic, a threat Sen. Johnson has dismissed by saying that ‘death is an unavoidable part of life.’ Why? To subsidize a foreign attack against the sovereignty of our elections with taxpayer dollars — an attack founded on a long-disproven, hardcore rightwing conspiracy theory that hinges on Sen. Johnson himself being corrupt and that the Senator has now explicitly stated he is attempting to exploit to bail out Donald Trump’s re-election campaign,” Bates said in a statement Wednesday.

Republican Senator Mitt Romney expressed a similar sentiment before the report came out, calling the investigation a “political exercise” that fell outside the “legitimate role of government.”

48

Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, (R., Wis.), and Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, (R., Iowa), said they “faced many obstacles” in their probe and added that “there remains much work to be done.”

Editor’s Note: This is a developing story and will be updated.

Senate report slams Bidens for conflicts of interest, flags possible criminal activity

GOP-led investigation cites 'glaring' evidence of Burisma bribe, suspicious foreign money transfers and sex trafficking.

by John Solomon

(vid at link)

https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/senate-report-slams-bidens-conflicts-interest-flags

The report, citing U.S. government records, also raised concerns about possible ties to sex and human trafficking rings. "Hunter Biden paid nonresident women who were nationals of Russia or other Eastern European countries and who appear to be linked to an Eastern European prostitution or human trafficking ring," the report said. …

- - - - -

A year-long Senate investigation concluded Wednesday that Hunter Biden's efforts to cash in on foreign business deals during his father's vice presidency raised alarm among U.S. government officials, who perceived an ethical conflict of interest and flagged concerns about possible criminal activity ranging from bribery to sex trafficking.

The long-awaited joint report by the GOP-led Senate Homeland and Government Affairs and Senate Finance Committees delivered several blockbuster revelations less than two months before Election Day, suggesting Obama administration officials ignored clear warning signs about ethical conflicts and possible extortion risks involving Joe Biden's family.

Perhaps the most explosive revelation was that the U.S. Treasury Department flagged payments collected overseas by Hunter Biden and business partner Devon Archer for possible illicit activities.

The so-called Suspicious Activity Reports flagged millions of dollars in transactions from the Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings, a Russian oligarch named Yelena Baturina, and Chinese businessmen with ties to Beijing's communist government, the report said. Senate investigators have yet to determine if the FBI or others investigated the concerns.

"The Treasury records acquired by the Chairmen show potential criminal activity relating to transactions among and between Hunter Biden, his family, and his associates with Ukrainian, Russian, Kazakh and Chinese nationals," the 87-page report disclosed, confirming an earlier report in Just the News.

The report, citing U.S. government records, also raised concerns about possible ties to sex and human trafficking rings. "Hunter Biden paid nonresident women who were nationals of Russia or other Eastern European countries and who appear to be linked to an Eastern European prostitution or human trafficking ring," the report said.

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson told Just the News Wednesday morning that the sheer volume of suspicious activity in Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings left the Vice President vulnerable to illicit influence or extortion.

“The report raises serious questions that former Vice President Biden needs to answer. There are simply too many potential conflict of interest, counterintelligence and extortion threats to ignore,” he said.

You can read the full report here:

File

FINAL DRAFT_CLEAN COPY (2).pdf

The findings are certain to roil the final weeks of the presidential election and present a starkly different picture of the Biden family than the one House Democrats offered a year ago when they impeached President Trump for seeking a Ukrainian investigation into Hunter Biden's dealings with Burisma while his father served as vice president.

Back then, Democrats insisted any concerns about Joe Biden and Hunter Biden were Russian disinformation or debunked conspiracy theories.

But State Department records and testimony from Obama-era appointees confirmed Just the News' extensive reporting over the last year that State officials held serious concerns that Burisma was corrupt and had paid a $7 million bribe in 2014 to Ukrainian prosecutors while under investigation during Hunter Biden's tenure there.

In addition, State official George Kent, one of the Democrats' star impeachment witnesses, testified and wrote in contemporaneous memos that Hunter Biden's role on Burisma's board created the appearance of an "awkward" conflict of interest that undercut U.S. anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine being led by Vice President Joe Biden, the report said.

Kent was so concerned that he canceled a State Department partnership with Burisma, reported the alleged Burisma bribe to the Justice Department, and tried to raise concerns directly to Vice President Joe Biden but was rebuffed, the report said, citing testimony and U.S. government records.

In October 2015, another senior State Department official, energy adviser Amos Hochstein, raised concerns with Joe Biden, as well as with Hunter Biden, that Hunter Biden’s position on Burisma’s board enabled Russian disinformation efforts and risked undermining U.S. policy in Ukraine. But nothing further happened

"The Obama administration knew that Hunter Biden's position on Burisma's board was problematic and did interfere in the efficient execution of policy with respect to Ukraine," the report concluded. "Moreover, this investigation has illustrated the extent to which officials within the Obama administration ignored the glaring warning signs when the vice president's son joined the board of a company owned by a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch."

In all, Hunter Biden and Archer received more than $4 million from Burisma during a time when the firm aggressively lobbied the State Department to make long-standing corruption allegations go away, at times invoking the vice president's son’s name for pressure.

But the U.S. government's worries about Hunter Biden's globetrotting business pursuits didn't stop in Ukraine.

"In addition to the over $4 million paid by Burisma for Hunter Biden's and Archer's board memberships, Hunter Biden, his family, and Archer received millions of dollars from foreign nationals with questionable backgrounds," the report said.

Senate investigators flagged transactions in at least three other foreign countries:

Archer received $142,300 from Kenges Rakishev of Kazakhstan, purportedly for a car, the same day Vice President Joe Biden appeared with Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and addressed Ukrainian legislators in Kyiv regarding Russia's actions in Crimea.

Hunter Biden received a $3.5 million wire transfer from Elena Baturina, the wife of the former mayor of Moscow and Russia's only female oligarch.

Hunter Biden opened a bank account with Chinese national Gongwen Dong to fund a $100,000 global spending spree for the Biden family.

Hunter Biden had business associations with Ye Jianming, Gongwen, and other Chinese nationals linked to the communist government and the People's Liberation Army. "Those associations resulted in millions of dollars in cash flow," the report said.

The report did not expand much on its sensational claim of alleged links to sex trafficking or prostitutes, reserving most of the discussion to two footnotes.

"There is extensive public reporting concerning Hunter Biden's alleged involvement with prostitution services. Records on file with the Committees do not directly confirm or refute these individual reports," investigators wrote. "However, they do confirm that Hunter Biden sent thousands of dollars to individuals who have either: 1) been involved in transactions consistent with possible human trafficking; 2) an association with the adult entertainment industry; or 3) potential association with prostitution. Some recipients of those funds are Ukrainian and Russian citizens.

"The records note that it is a documented fact that Hunter Biden has sent funds to nonresident alien women in the United States who are citizens of Russia and Ukraine and who have subsequently wired funds they have received from Hunter Biden to individuals located in Russia and Ukraine. The records also note that some of these transactions are linked to what 'appears to be an Eastern European prostitution or human trafficking ring," the footnote added.

The report said the Senate probe will continue in part because investigators have been thwarted by a lack of cooperation and have not yet been able to determine whether the FBI, U.S. intelligence or other agencies fully investigated the concerns about the Bidens.

The report does not accuse either Joe or Hunter Biden of a specific crime; rather it flags warning signs about their conduct and questions whether officials turned a blind eye. Both Bidens have long denied wrongdoing and called the Senate investigation a partisan endeavor.

Democrats are certain to contest the findings, but they will face the awkward challenge that the key evidence supporting the Republicans' conclusions came from Obama-Biden era files and witnesses, including Kent, the bowtied diplomat who was a star witness for Democrats at impeachment.

Kent's testimony and emails cited in the report paint a compelling portrait of the difficulties Joe Biden created by continuing to preside over Ukraine anti-corruption policy as Obama's vice president while his son served on the board of a company under investigation for corruption and run by an oligarch named Mykola Zlochevsky.

"The presence of Hunter Biden on the Burisma board was very awkward for all U.S. officials," Kent wrote in a Sept. 6, 2016 email to senior State officials, including then-U.S. ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.

In his testimony to the committees, he expounded on the impact those concerns had on U.S. policy in Ukraine, especially in fighting corruption.

"People who talk the talk need to walk the walk, and for the U.S. government, collectively, when we talk about the need to have high standards of integrity, again, as I've said, the presence of [Hunter Biden] on the board created the perception of a potential conflict of interest," he testified.

Kent also discussed the extraordinary specter of having to report to the Justice Department that the very firm paying Hunter Biden in Ukraine was believed to have paid a bribe to Ukrainian prosecutors to make corruption allegations disappear.

"Burisma's owner was a poster child for corrupt behavior," Kent testified to the committees. "… I would have advised any American not to get on the board of Zlochevsky's company."

Hunter Biden finally left Burisma in 2019 as his father began his quest to win the presidency in 2020.

>>5523

>>5524

The final report is available from the Senate website:

https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Ukraine%20Report_FINAL.pdf

Both versions of this report are 87 pages but this one from the Senate website is 3.8MB instead of the 1.4MB version that was entitled Hunter Biden and Burisma Full Report FINAL_DRAFT_CLEAN_COPY_2_.pdf

So use this one instead of the earlier posted one.

Hunter Biden’s Firm Received $3.5 Million from One of Russia’s Most ‘Powerful’ Oligarchs

A new report by the Senate Homeland Security Committee indicates that Hunter Biden’s private equity firm received $3.5 million from one of Russia’s most “powerful” female oligarchs in 2014.

The report, which was made public on Wednesday, shows that Rosemont Seneca Thornton, LLC, a firm that Biden incorporated with his longtime business associate Devon Archer in May 2013, had a previously unknown financial relationship with Yelena Baturina, a Russian businesswoman now living in the United Kingdom. According to bank documents reviewed by the Homeland Security Committee, Baturina wired $3.5 million to a bank account controlled by Rosemont Seneca Thornton as part of a “consultancy agreement.”

At the time of the transfer, Baturina, a well-known construction magnate, was living in the United Kingdom with her late husband Yuri Luzhkov, a onetime mayor of Moscow. Baturina and her husband immigrated to Great Britain in 2011 after Luzhkov was dismissed from public office by former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev as part of a public corruption probe. The former mayor, in particular, was accused of using his office to approve more than 20 real estate projects linked to Baturina’s business interests, according to the Homeland Security Committee.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/09/23/hunter-bidens-firm-received-3-5-million-from-one-of-russias-most-powerful-oligarchs/

https://www.judicialwatch.org/in-the-news/russian-trolling-biden/

and

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/09/22/fitton-obama-official-notes-russians-trolling-joe-biden-on-son-hunter/

Fitton: Obama Official Notes Russians Trolling Joe Biden on Son Hunter

Tom Fitton

22 Sep 20200

Americans weren’t generally aware of Joe and Hunter Biden’s shenanigans in Ukraine, but Obama’s State Department certainly was, as was Ukraine, its pro-Russian newspaper sardonically referring to the soon to be then-Vice President Joe Biden showing up to protect his son’s business in Ukraine.

We learned this from three pages of State Department records. They include a January 17, 2017, email from George Kent, the Obama administration’s deputy assistant secretary of state in charge of Ukraine policy, which was copied to then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, highlighting Russia-linked media “trolling” Joe Biden over “his son’s business.”

We obtained the records in response to our FOIA lawsuit filed in January 2020 seeking records of communications from the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv mentioning Burisma (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:20-cv-00229)). (The records had been separately released to Citizens United.)

An email was sent four days prior to the inauguration of President Donald Trump to a redacted recipient and CCd to Yovanovitch with the subject line “medvedchuk-linked vesti trolls Biden.” Kent writes: “Burisma – gift that keeps on giving. (With medvedchuk affiliated Vesti pushing the troll like storyline on visit day)”

Medvedchuk refers to Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian politician, lawyer, business oligarch, and People’s Deputy of Ukraine. He’s considered a Putin ally. Vesti is the pro-Russian newspaper in Ukraine.

Hunter Biden, son of then-Vice President Joe Biden, served on the board of directors for Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings despite having no previous experience in the energy industry.

Kent includes a “Review of Ukrainian Printed Press” that includes the Ukrainian newspaper Vesti, which described Biden’s visit to Ukraine, saying: “Will J. Biden arrive to secure his son’s business? According to experts, J. Biden, as the unofficial curator of ‘the Ukrainian question’, will give P. Poroshenko recommendations about working with the new US administration. Another aspect is the protection of his own business interests.”

On January 17, 2017, Biden was on his sixth visit in seven years to Ukraine. When Biden visited Ukraine in 2015, he threatened to withhold $1 billion if the country’s top prosecutor was not dismissed. Hunter Biden was under investigation by the later-fired prosecutor general.

Kent and Yovanovitch were both star witnesses for Democrats in the Trump impeachment hearings. Kent testified he warned the Obama administration about Hunter Biden’s work with Burisma: “My concern was that there was the possibility of a perception of a conflict of interest.” Kent answered the questions of Rep. Kathy Castor (D-FL):

CASTOR: OK, but you know Hunter Biden’s role in Burisma’s board of directors. At some point you testified in your deposition that you expressed some concern to the Vice President’s Office. Is that correct

KENT: That is correct.

CASTOR: And what did they do about that concern that you expressed?

KENT: I have no idea. I reported my concern to the Office of the Vice President.

In April 2014, Hunter Biden joined the board of the Ukrainian gas company. He served on the board until early 2019. Burisma, which was under investigation by the Ukrainian government, stated at the time of his hiring that Biden would be “in charge of the Holdings’ legal unit and will provide support for the Company among international organizations.”

This email shows the Obama State Department had a longstanding concern about then-Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden’s Burisma involvement – and how the Russians were using Biden’s conflicts of interest to undermine U.S. policy.

Hunter Biden Raised 'Counterintelligence And Extortion' Concerns, May Have Participated In Sex Trafficking: Senate Report

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/hunter-biden-raised-counterintelligence-and-extortion-concerns-may-have-participated-sex

by Tyler Durden

Wed, 09/23/2020

Update (1135ET): Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) has responded to the Biden probe, saying that after Trump was impeached "for directing a scheme to extort a foreign partner to announce an investigation into Vice President Joe Biden's son," that "Trump's most willing allies in Congress quickly took up that mantle, and carried out his demand…"

Schiff accused the two Senate Committee Chairs of "promoting the same Russian disinformation," adding "the Kremlin must be very pleased."

The California lawmaker notably didn't address any of the core claims in the report.

Reaction statement from @HouseIntel Chairman @RepAdamSchiff. pic.twitter.com/Gt2Z99Qa86

— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) September 23, 2020

- *

A long-awaited Senate report on Hunter Biden's financial dealings with Ukrainian, Chinese and Russian businesses created potential "criminal financial, counterintelligence and extortion concerns," and alarmed US officials who perceived an ethical conflict of interest and flagged potential crimes ranging from sex trafficking to bribery.

The findings are contained in a joint report by the GOP-led Senate Homeland and Government Affairs and Senate Finance Committees, released just six days before the first Presidential Debate between Joe Biden and President Trump.

OUT TODAY: Report with @chuckgrassley found millions of dollars in questionable financial transactions between Hunter Biden & his associates and foreign individuals, including the wife of the former mayor of Moscow. https://t.co/R1MxQ4xGKP

— Senator Ron Johnson (@SenRonJohnson) September 23, 2020

According to the Daily Caller's Chuck Ross, suspicious financial transactions between Hunter Biden's firms and foreign nationals from Russia and China - including a CCP-linked Chinese businessman, raised serious concerns. What's more, Hunter's seat on the board of Ukrainian energy giant Burisma while his father served as the Obama administration point-man for Ukraine, worried State Department officials in 2015 and 2016.

One official, Amos Hochstein, told the Senate Homeland Security and Senate Finance committees that he said to then-Vice President Joe Biden in October 2015 that Hunter Biden’s position on the board of Burisma “enabled Russian disinformation efforts and risked undermining U.S. policy in Ukraine.”

Hunter Biden, now 50, joined Burisma’s board of directors in April 2014, shortly after his father, Joe Biden, took over as the Obama administration’s chief liaison to Ukraine. -Daily Caller

As Ross notes, while the report does not produce direct evidence of wrongdoing by Hunter Biden, Republicans say the evidence paints a troubling picture of Biden receiving "millions of dollars from foreign sources as a result of business relationships that he built during the period when his father was vice president of the United States and after."

Hunter Biden also received a $3.5 million wire transfer from Elena Baturina, the wife of the former mayor of Moscow, according to the report.

And as Just The News' John Solomon writes, "Perhaps the most explosive revelation was that the U.S. Treasury Department flagged payments collected overseas by Hunter Biden and business partner Devon Archer for possible illicit activities."

The so-called Suspicious Activity Reports flagged millions of dollars in transactions from the Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings, a Russian oligarch named Yelena Baturina, and Chinese businessmen with ties to Beijing's communist government, the report said. Senate investigators have yet to determine if the FBI or others investigated the concerns. -Just The News

"The Treasury records acquired by the Chairmen show potential criminal activity relating to transactions among and between Hunter Biden, his family, and his associates with Ukrainian, Russian, Kazakh and Chinese nationals," reads the 87-page report. Other transactions involving Biden-controlled firms were flagged for "potential criminal financial activity," including wire transfers to Hunter's Uncle, James Biden.

The report focuses on millions of dollars in wire payments that Hunter Biden’s firms received from Ye Jianming, the founder of CEFC China Energy Co., and Gongwen Dong, a U.S.-based associate of Ye’s.

According to Republicans, Ye has “extensive” connections to the Chinese government.

The Senate report says that on Aug. 4, 2017, a subsidiary of Ye’s company called CEFC Infrastructure Investment (US) LLC, wired $100,000 to Owasco, the Biden law firm.

A month later, on Sept. 8, 2017, Hunter Biden and Gongwen Dong applied for a $100,000 line of credit under a shell company they formed called Hudson West III LLC, according to the Senate report.

Biden, his uncle James, and James’s wife, Sara Biden, accessed the account through credit cards, and spent $101,291 on what Republicans call “extravagant items,” including plane tickets, hotels, restaurants and items at Apple stores. -Daily Caller

Meanwhile, according to US government records cited in the report, concerns were raised over potential ties to sex and human trafficking rings.

"Hunter Biden paid nonresident women who were nationals of Russia or other Eastern European countries and who appear to be linked to an Eastern European prostitution or human trafficking ring," the report reads.

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson told Just The News that the sheer volume of potentially illegal activity in Hunter Biden's foreign dealings left Joe Biden vulnerable to illicit influence or extortion.

"The report raises serious questions that former Vice President Biden needs to answer. There are simply too many potential conflict of interest, counterintelligence and extortion threats to ignore," he said.

The Biden campaign has called the Senate report an effort to "subsidize a foreign attack against the sovereignty of our elections with taxpayer dollars" and to push a "long-disproven, hardcore rightwing conspiracy theory."

Biden campaign's @AndrewBatesNC calls Sen. Ron Johnson's report on Burisma/Hunter Biden an effort to "subsidize a foreign attack against the sovereignty of our elections with taxpayer dollars" and to push a "long-disproven, hardcore rightwing conspiracy theory" pic.twitter.com/LRDKEdu0fK

— Johnny Verhovek (@JTHVerhovek) September 23, 2020

And of course Biden's media defenders are hard at work today:

A totally laughable headline from Politico, which was the go-to outlet for Democrats to pre-empt and undercut the Biden probe. https://t.co/vy7rfX6fZ2 pic.twitter.com/yqkLGla8GY

— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) September 23, 2020

The findings, as compiled by the Daily Wire's Ryan Saavedra:

In early 2015 the former Acting Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine, George Kent, raised concerns to officials in Vice President Joe Biden’s office about the perception of a conflict of interest with respect to Hunter Biden’s role on Burisma’s board. Kent’s concerns went unaddressed, and in September 2016, he emphasized in an email to his colleagues, “Furthermore, the presence of Hunter Biden on the Burisma board was very awkward for all U.S. officials pushing an anticorruption agenda in Ukraine.”

In October 2015, senior State Department official Amos Hochstein raised concerns with Vice President Biden, as well as with Hunter Biden, that Hunter Biden’s position on Burisma’s board enabled Russian disinformation efforts and risked undermining U.S. policy in Ukraine.

Although Kent believed that Hunter Biden’s role on Burisma’s board was awkward for all U.S. officials pushing an anti-corruption agenda in Ukraine, the Committees are only aware of two individuals — Kent and former U.S. Special Envoy and Coordinator for International Energy Affairs Amos Hochstein — who raised concerns to Vice President Joe Biden (Hochstein) or his staff (Kent).

The awkwardness for Obama administration officials continued well past his presidency. Former Secretary of State John Kerry had knowledge of Hunter Biden’s role on Burisma’s board, but when asked about it at a town hall event in Nashua, N.H. on Dec. 8, 2019, Kerry falsely said, “I had no knowledge about any of that. None. No.” Evidence to the contrary is detailed in Section V.

Former Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland testified that confronting oligarchs would send an anticorruption message in Ukraine. Kent told the Committees that Zlochevsky was an “odious oligarch.” However, in December 2015, instead of following U.S. objectives of confronting oligarchs, Vice President Biden’s staff advised him to avoid commenting on Zlochevsky and recommended he say, “I’m not going to get into naming names or accusing individuals.”

Hunter Biden was serving on Burisma’s board (supposedly consulting on corporate governance and transparency) when Zlochevsky allegedly paid a $7 million bribe to officials serving under Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Vitaly Yarema, to “shut the case against Zlochevsky.” Kent testified that this bribe occurred in December 2014 (seven months after Hunter joined Burisma’s board), and, after learning about it, he and the Resident Legal Advisor reported this allegation to the FBI.

Hunter Biden was a U.S. Secret Service protectee from Jan. 29, 2009 to July 8, 2014. A day before his last trip as a protectee, Time published an article describing Burisma’s ramped up lobbying efforts to U.S. officials and Hunter’s involvement in Burisma’s board. Before ending his protective detail, Hunter Biden received Secret Service protection on trips to multiple foreign locations, including Moscow, Beijing, Doha, Paris, Seoul, Manila, Tokyo, Mexico City, Milan, Florence, Shanghai, Geneva, London, Dublin, Munich, Berlin, Bogota, Abu Dhabi, Nairobi, Hong Kong, Taipei, Buenos Aires, Copenhagen, Johannesburg, Brussels, Madrid, Mumbai and Lake Como.

Andrii Telizhenko, the Democrats’ personification of Russian disinformation, met with Obama administration officials, including Elisabeth Zentos, a member of Obama’s National Security Council, at least 10 times. A Democrat lobbying firm, Blue Star Strategies, contracted with Telizhenko from 2016 to 2017 and continued to request his assistance as recent as the summer of 2019. A recent news article detailed other extensive contacts between Telizhenko and Obama administration officials.

In addition to the over $4 million paid by Burisma for Hunter Biden’s and Archer’s board memberships, Hunter Biden, his family, and Archer received millions of dollars from foreign nationals with questionable backgrounds.

Archer received $142,300 from Kenges Rakishev of Kazakhstan, purportedly for a car, the same day Vice President Joe Biden appeared with Ukrainian Prime Minister Arsemy Yasenyuk and addressed Ukrainian legislators in Kyiv regarding Russia’s actions in Crimea.

Hunter Biden received a $3.5 million wire transfer from Elena Baturina, the wife of the former mayor of Moscow.

Hunter Biden opened a bank account with Gongwen Dong to fund a $100,000 global spending spree with James Biden and Sara Biden.

Hunter Biden had business associations with Ye Jianming, Gongwen Dong, and other Chinese nationals linked to the Communist government and the People’s Liberation Army. Those associations resulted in millions of dollars in cash flow.

Hunter Biden paid nonresident women who were nationals of Russia or other Eastern European countries and who appear to be linked to an “Eastern European prostitution or human trafficking ring.”

Imagine if this was anyone with the last name Trump?

Senate GOP Probe: Hunter Biden’s Work for Burisma ‘Cast Shadow’ on Obama-Era Anti-Corruption Efforts in Ukraine

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/09/23/gop-hunter-bidens-ukraine-dealings-interfered-u-s-policy/

Edwin Mora

23 Sep 20200

The findings of a months-long probe by two Republican chairmen released Wednesday asserted that Hunter Biden’s tenure on the board of the corruption-linked Ukrainian gas company Burisma “did interfere in the efficient execution” of Obama-era policy toward Ukraine led by former Vice President Joe Biden.

“Hunter Biden’s position on Burisma’s board cast a shadow over the work of those [Obama-era officials] advancing anti-corruption reforms in Ukraine,” the report from Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said.

Hunter worked for Burisma between April 2014 and April 2019 for a lucrative salary of tens of thousands a month. As VP, Joe Biden, now the Democrat presidential nominee, was in charge of the Obama administration’s handling of Ukraine during most of his son Hunter’s tenure at Burisma.

The report conceded it “is not clear” to what extent Hunter’s work for Burisma impacted U.S. policy toward Ukraine.

However, it said Hunter’s employment at a Ukrainian company deemed corrupt by U.S. officials when his father was the public face of U.S. dealings with Ukraine created an “awkwardness” for the Obama-era State Department officials.

Grassley and Johnson wrote in the report:

Hunter Biden’s role on Burisma’s board hindered the efforts of dedicated career-service individuals who were fighting for anti-corruption measures in Ukraine. Because the vice president’s son had a direct link to a corrupt company and its owner, State Department officials were required to maintain situational awareness of Hunter Biden’s association with Burisma.

Unfortunately, U.S. officials had no other choice but to endure the “awkward[ness]” of continuing to push an anti-corruption agenda in Ukraine while the vice president’s son sat on the board of a Ukrainian company with a corrupt owner, earning tens of thousands of dollars a month.

The GOP investigators found that only two individuals raised concerns to their superiors at Obama’s State Department — George Kent, currently the deputy assistant secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs, and Amos Hochstein, a top Obama-era State official.

However, their concerns appear to have fallen on deaf ears.

The report confirmed impeachment testimony from Kent that the Obama administration was aware of the conflict of interest created by Hunter’s dealings with Ukraine, but did nothing.

Obama’s Vice-President Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry knew of Hunter’s position at a company linked to corruption, the probe found.

Johnson and Grassley wrote:

What the Chairmen discovered during the course of this investigation is that the Obama administration knew that Hunter Biden’s position on Burisma’s board was problematic and did interfere in the efficient execution of policy with respect to Ukraine. Moreover, this investigation has illustrated the extent to which officials within the Obama administration ignored the glaring warning signs when the vice president’s son joined the board of a company owned by a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch.

The release of the controversial report came weeks before the November 3 presidential election, prompting allegations by Democrats that Sens. Johnson and Grassley are trying to interfere in the race and boost Trump’s chances of winning.

On Wednesday, Senate Democrats who make up the minority in the panels led by Johnson and Grassley released their own information, countering the GOP findings and dismissing them as Russian disinformation.

“Findings show Republican investigation amplifies known Russian attack on U.S. election & allegations that U.S. policy toward Ukraine changed to benefit Burisma are false,” the top Democrats on the Johnson and Grassley-led committees said in a joint statement.

Grassley and Johnson refuted the Democrats’ allegation.

“The minority falsely accused the [GOP] chairmen of engaging in a Russian disinformation campaign and used other tactics to interfere in the investigation,” they wrote in the report.

'Riding the Dragon': Documentary probes Hunter Biden's dealing in China

Investments bolstered companies linked to Chinese military

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/sep/14/hunter-biden-china-deals-probed-by-documentary-rid/

By Bill Gertz - The Washington Times - Monday, September 14, 2020

Hunter Biden, son of Democratic presidential nominee Joseph R. Biden, worked for a Shanghai investment firm involved in government- and military-linked deals that bolstered the Chinese military, including the purchase of an American auto parts maker, according to a new documentary film.

The younger Mr. Biden, a lawyer and investment banker, until recently was a director at Bohai Harvest RST, known as BHR, formed with $1 billion in Chinese government funding shortly after then-Vice President Biden visited China in December 2013, according to the investigative report.

see also

Ron Johnson says Ukraine report will show Joe Biden's 'unfitness for office'

But the most troubling aspect of Hunter’s relationship with foreign entities isn’t simply that a politician’s family is getting wealthy. That’s all too common. It’s that his largest partner overseas appears to be the Chinese government, a brutal totalitarian regime fast emerging as America’s major 21st-century adversary. And some of their commercial deals have clear implications for national security.

Not long after its founding, BHR, the investment firm, became involved in a string of high-profile deals involving sensitive national security concerns. BHR received a pre-public offering stake in a state-controlled nuclear company now under federal indictment for espionage. It invested in strategic mineral resources in Africa. And it partnered with a Chinese military contractor to purchase a Michigan-based manufacturer of vibration dampening equipment, which is used in transport systems but is considered “dual use” by the federal government, i.e., it has military applications.

During all of these deals, Hunter Biden sat on the firm’s board of directors. His close friend and business partner Devon Archer was BHR’s vice chairman and a member of the investment committee.

Joe Biden has pledged that his family will not do any new foreign deals if he is elected president. This is an echo of a promise President Trump made in December 2016. Such promises are largely meaningless. But beyond securing new deals, the current Biden commercial relationships are troubling enough.

While Hunter Biden resigned from the board of BHR under the glare of public attention, he retains his equity stake in the firm. And the full extent of his relationships through his other businesses cannot be known. And the Bidens are not talking.

Peter Schweizer’s research is featured in the new film “Riding the Dragon: The Bidens’ Chinese Secrets.” Jacob McLeod is a researcher and writer.

Foreign Money Flowing To Hunter Biden Triggered Bank Alarm Bells As ‘Potential Criminal Financial Activity,’ Senate Investigation Finds

https://dailycaller.com/2020/09/23/senate-investigation-hunter-biden-james-biden-sara-biden-sars-banks-treasury-department-china-russia/

Peter Hasson

September 23, 2020

Foreign money flowing to Hunter Biden triggered alarm bells at banks as “potential criminal financial activity,” according to a Senate investigation released Wednesday.

The Senate investigation cited numerous transactions that banks flagged in reports to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

In one of the transactions, Chinese billionaire Ye Jianming’s company sent $100,000 to Hunter’s law firm, according to the report.

In another transaction, Chinese financier Gongwen Dong opened a line of credit with Hunter, which Hunter Biden, James Biden and James’s wife Sara used for a $100,000 spending spree, the report stated.

Streams of foreign money flowing to Hunter Biden repeatedly triggered internal banking alarms as “potential criminal financial activity,” according to an investigation by two Senate committees released Wednesday.

The Senate Homeland Security Committee and Senate Finance Committee’s investigation probed Hunter Biden’s foreign dealings during Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s tenure as vice president. The report cited at least four large transactions that banks flagged in suspicious activity reports (SARS) to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

“The Treasury records acquired by the Chairmen show potential criminal activity relating to transactions among and between Hunter Biden, his family, and his associates with Ukrainian, Russian, Kazakh and Chinese nationals,” the report stated.

“In particular, these documents show that Hunter Biden received millions of dollars from foreign sources as a result of business relationships that he built during the period when his father was vice president of the United States and after.”

The report noted that the transactions cited “do not illustrate the full extent of the material” obtained by the committees, but “are designed to illustrate the depth and extent of some questionable financial transactions” and “illustrate serious counterintelligence and extortion concerns relating to Hunter Biden and his family.”

The report does not indicate whether federal authorities ever investigated Hunter Biden’s transactions mentioned in the report.

At least two transactions flagged for “potential criminal financial activity” involved Hunter Biden and Chinese nationals, according to the report.

In August 2017, a subsidiary of CEFC China Energy, which was owned by Chinese billionaire Ye Jianming at the time, sent Hunter Biden’s law firm, Owasco, a $100,000 payment that “was identified for potential criminal financial activity,” according to the report.

Another transaction was flagged a month later, when a Chinese national linked to Ye opened a line of credit with Hunter Biden, which multiple members of the Biden family used for lavish purchases, according to the report.

The line of credit was opened the same day that CEFC signed a much-heralded deal with Russian oil giant Rosneft in September 2017, the report noted.

“On the same day that the impending Rosneft deal was announced, Hunter Biden and Gongwen Dong, a Chinese national who has reportedly executed transactions for limited liability companies controlled by Ye Jianming, applied to a bank and opened a line of credit under the business name Hudson West III LLC,” the report stated.

Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s brother James and James’s wife Sara “were all authorized users of credit cards associated with the account. The Bidens subsequently used the credit cards they opened to purchase $101,291.46 worth of extravagant items, including airline tickets and multiple items at Apple Inc. stores, pharmacies, hotels and restaurants,” the report said.

“The cards were collateralized by transferring $99,000 from a Hudson West III account to a separate account, where the funds were held until the cards were closed. The transaction was identified for potential financial criminal activity.”

James and Sara Biden were also involved in another one of Hunter Biden’s transactions that was flagged for potential criminal activity.

The report noted that “starting on Aug. 8, the same day the $5 million was received, and continuing through Sept. 25, 2018, Hudson West III sent frequent payments to Owasco, Hunter Biden’s firm. These payments, which were described as consulting fees, reached $4,790,375.25 in just over a year.”

Less than a week later, Owasco started moving money to James Biden’s consulting firm, Lion Hall Group, according to the report.

“Between Aug. 14, 2017 and Aug. 3, 2018, Owasco sent 20 wires totaling $1,398,999 to the Lion Hall Group, a consulting firm that lists James Biden and his wife, Sara Biden, on the bank account. This transaction was identified for potential criminal financial activity,” the report stated.

The report noted that Sara Biden was largely uncooperative when the bank investigated the transactions. Sara said the payments were related to a join project but “told the bank that she would not provide any supporting documentation, and she also refused to provide additional information to more clearly explain the activity,” the report stated.

“Consequently, the bank submitted the account for closure.” (RELATED: Chinese Private Equity Firm Updates Records To Remove Hunter Biden From Its Board, But He Still Owns 10% Of The Company)

Another flagged transaction involved Hunter’s law firm and Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company on whose board Hunter sat from April 2014 until April 2019.

Burisma began sending regular payments to Owasco in January 2016, according to the report. The payments “continued throughout most of 2016 and ceased eight days after Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8, 2016 presidential election,” the report stated.

“Between Jan. 25, 2016, and Nov. 16, 2016, Burisma sent nine wires totaling $752,054.99 to Owasco with each of the nine transactions listing ‘Owasco, PC/Robert Biden’ as the recipient,” the report stated, noting that the payments “were identified for potential financial criminal activity.”

Hunter Biden’s legal counsel did not return a request for comment for this article.

It was Sen. Ron Johnson's committee that released the Senate investigative report scratching the surface of Hunter Biden's corruption. Read his own first-hand words below.

Sen. Ron Johnson: How Hunter Biden Made His Millions

Posted By Ian Schwartz

September 26, 2020

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/09/26/sen_ron_johnson_how_hunter_biden_made_his_millions.html

Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) weighed in on the GOP report on Hunter Biden's financial ties in Europe and China in an interview with FOX Business host Maria Bartiromo on Thursday.

"I think we caught vice president in a lie which, by the way, I never believed that was true," Johnson said. "How can you literally fly over to China, you know. It's not just a half hour flight, you know, that multiple hour flight to have Hunter Biden on Air Force Two for all those many hours have been, Hunter Biden have his own agenda in China which included."

"Maria what is amazing is the deafening silence out of the mainstream media here," he said. "They looked at our report, these seven pages. I don't think any even read it. But what they did instead is they just kind of shrug and said oh, that's just a bunch of old news. Because maybe one news outlet at one point in time reported the fact that Hunter had some connections with China. Nothing new here. There's all kinds of new, very troubling pieces of information."

"This is probably the most frustrating thing I have ever tried to accomplish – just trying to get to the truth. And that is all I've been trying to get to is the truth," Johnson said.

- - - - -

SEN. RON JOHNSON (R-WI): We never sought to target or go after the Bidens. They put themselves in the middle of this with Hunter's glaring and obvious conflict of interest joining the board of Burisma. So this happened just a couple of months after Ukraine had their revolution dignity which was really all about ridding Ukraine of corruption and here we set up this glaring conflict of interest where Hunter Biden's paid $4.2 million, he and his business partners… $4.2 million over about 30 months. That calculates to about $140,000 a month, almost $1.7 million per year. It's a pretty good gig if you've got the right – the right last name.

And let's face it. This was all about Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma trying to gain influence so that charges, the investigation against him in Ukraine would be dropped.

One thing that's kind of notable is that in George Kemp's interview for our committee, he pointed out that $7-million bribe was paid by Zlochevsky, by Burisma to make those investigations go away.

Seven months after Hunter Biden and Devon Archer joined the board of Burisma. And remember Hunter Biden joined the board supposedly to consult on corporate governance and transparency. He didn't do a particularly good job. But then you hop to Russia $3.5 million dollars paid to Yelena Baturina, the former wife of the now deceased former mayor of Moscow. She's Russia's lone woman billionaire or a woman billionaire in Russia. Got her billions through probably corrupt practices being the mayor's wife.

We had a very strange payment from Kazakhstan $142,000 to buy a car for Devon Archer and then the millions of cash flow between the intricate web of corporate dealings with Chinese nationals that have current connections to the communist government and former affiliations with the People's Liberation Army helping arrange, for example, the purchase by and the control by Chinese business of a U.S. dual parts auto manufacturer, the type of equipment to be used for military purposes by the PLA.

Again it's such an extensive web, they're so many millions of dollars flowing back and forth at those associations, we've just only uncovered – I think we're only scratching the surface. We have no guarantee that we've uncovered it all. We just really laid out a pretty troubling web that represents potential conflicts of interest, counterintelligence and extortion with a Biden administration.

No News Is Good News: Media Willfully Ignore Hunter Biden Scandal

COMMENTARY

By Mark Hemingway

October 02, 2020

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/10/02/no_news_is_good_news_media_willfully_ignore_hunter_biden_scandal_144347.html

Last week, a Senate Intelligence Committee report detailed how the son of a major presidential candidate, who has an extensive history of shady foreign business dealings, received a $3.5-million wire transfer from the wife of a Russian politician. The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, and most major media outlets didn’t cover the wire-transfer story at all. Four years ago, not reporting such a story was a possibility too absurd to even contemplate – but then again, no one would have predicted the candidate with the shady Russia ties is not Donald Trump, but Joe Biden.

People often talk about how Trump is responsible for destroying political norms, and that’s a valid concern. However, one of the truly frightening things about the Trump era is how institutions have exploited a perceived crisis in truth-telling to justify abandoning their own standards by blaming it on Trump. Increasingly, we see major stories break where the media establishment decides on a collective omertà because the story undermines its own credibility or might sway voters in directions it doesn’t approve of. When that happens, no news is good news.

The problem with hiding the truth is that you can’t suppress it forever, let alone a week, in this news environment. After the initial blackout, we are finally starting to see some coverage of Hunter Biden’s suspect wire transfer – but only after Trump himself raised the issue in the recent presidential debate and forced the media’s hand. The little coverage the issue has received is instructive, and not in a good way.

When Trump raised the issue at the debate, Joe Biden responded by saying the claim was “Totally discredited. Totally discredited.” Given that it’s a direct allegation in a government document and Biden is flatly denying it, you’d think this would be a perfect opportunity for the media to dig in and sort out the truth of the claim. Instead, they have essentially punted on the issue.

According to PolitiFact, which refused to rate the claim either true or false, the facts are in dispute because “Biden’s lawyer says he did not co-found the partnership [that received the money] and had no stake in it,” and “Democrats say they reviewed the Republicans’ documentation but did not find a specific link to Hunter Biden.”

Serious journalists would see this for the artful dodge that it is. Essentially, no one disputes Treasury documents showing $3.5 million was wired to the Rosemont Seneca Thornton firm from the wife of the former mayor of Moscow for a vague “consultancy agreement.” Hunter Biden’s lawyer is suddenly disputing his client’s involvement in Rosemont Seneca Thornton without providing any tangible evidence to back up the denial. Senate Democrats have a partisan interest in separating Hunter Biden from the source of the tainted cash and their denial is obviously parsed.

So why does the Senate intel committee report that Biden was a “co-founder” of the firm in question? Well, one clue might be that committee members read it in the media. A lengthy New Yorker profile of Hunter Biden from last year, which clearly had extensive cooperation from the Biden team, reported the following: “In June, 2009, five months after Joe Biden became Vice-President, Hunter co-founded a second company, Rosemont Seneca Partners, with Christopher Heinz, Senator John Kerry’s stepson.” That was 15 months ago. For the Biden camp to be disputing this key fact now seems awfully convenient. Further, in that same magazine article, Hunter Biden admits to taking an $80,000 bribe from a Communist Chinese Party-connected tycoon, in the form of a 2.8-carat diamond delivered to his hotel room.

If the Biden camp is denying Hunter’s role in the firm in question, the media should note the denial, while investigating the truth of the claim. In the meantime, the press is probably obligated to note his history of taking money from foreign sources, a pattern which tends to undercut the denials. And then there’s still the issue of what his father said at the debate.

For Joe Biden to tell the American people this accusation is “totally discredited,” when the media hadn’t even touched the story, well, honest fact-checkers would tell it like it is: Joe Biden stood up in front of tens of millions of Americans on Tuesday night and told a self-serving lie – a lie that would have been called a four-alarm trouser conflagration if Trump had said it.

Naturally, there are consequences for the decision not to report major news such as the Hunter Biden story until you are forced to. The most obvious one is that media credibility takes a huge hit. The media have adopted a fairly jejune attitude toward their own institutional decline, blaming it on an increase in partisanship and polarization, but they’re quick to mix up cause and effect. They never seem to ask how much their skewed coverage is fueling that same polarization.

Exhibit A here would be the media’s QAnon fascination – the right-wing, largely pro-Trump online cult centered on a bunch of deranged conspiracies about a pedophile ring running the country. There’s a case to be made that the blizzard of media coverage has vastly overstated the influence of QAnon, but it’s caused enough real-world problems that the media are understandably baying for relevant Republicans and conservative activists to make it clear this lunacy is “totally discredited,” in the literal, as opposed to Joe Biden meaning of the phrase.

The rise of QAnon, however, is also partially a result of a media environment where supposedly authoritative sources of information aren’t credible. If you can’t trust, say, the New York Times to do straightforward reporting on Hunter Biden’s obvious corruption, you’re going to be a lot more inclined to stumble across fringe sources of information while searching for facts online.

Unfortunately, the Hunter Biden story is practically the new normal in terms of how it illustrates media willingness to suppress or ignore inconvenient truths. The credulous groupthink coverage of Trump-Russia collusion, as well as the unwillingness to pursue Jeffrey Epstein – an actual pedophile cabal involving very powerful people – also goes a long way toward making QAnon’s nutjobbery seem more credible than it should be.

None of this is to say that the mainstream press is responsible for anything QAnon does or says, but the media can still do something about America’s information crisis. If citizens lacked valid reasons to suspect the truth is being hidden, they wouldn’t go looking for it on parts of the information superhighway where it’s a good idea not to roll down the window.

Edicts need to come down from major media outlets about reporting the news when it happens, not when political circumstances necessitate or dictate how a story is covered. One way of preventing such obvious imbalances in coverage is to pursue ideological diversity in newsrooms along with actual diversity – if no one in your newsroom attends church weekly, owns a gun, or regularly votes Republican, you don’t have reporters who are going to raise objections about imbalanced coverage, much less understand half the country.

Right now, any understanding of half the country begins and ends with the fact they loathe and distrust the media. Perhaps not all of that anger at the media is justified, but it’s righteous enough, especially after last week. For once, the media were handed a Russian influence-peddling scandal on a silver platter and the vast majority of major outlets declined to even mention it. Such bad behavior makes the calculus for determining who’s a bigger threat pretty clear for a lot of Trump supporters. Even if the president does and says things that make them uncomfortable, he’ll be gone in four months or four years. A media that hides the truth this brazenly is going to be much harder to get rid of.

Mark Hemingway is a writer in Alexandria, Va. You can follow him on twitter @heminator.

How Treasury Dept. tracked overseas cash pocketed by Hunter Biden

Hunter Biden, former Vice President Joe Biden's son, is shown in this undated file photo. (Associated Press/File)

By Rowan Scarborough - The Washington Times - Sunday, October 4, 2020

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/oct/4/how-treasury-dept-tracked-overseas-cash-pocketed-b/

Democratic presidential nominee Joseph R. Biden flatly denied at Tuesday night’s debate that his lawyer son took huge sums of money from corrupt oligarchs and Chinese communists during his vice presidency, but Treasury Department reports show that Hunter Biden did receive the money.

President Trump chose to make an issue of Hunter Biden’s cash haul from Russia, Ukraine and China with the implication that unsavory figures were trying to buy Vice President Biden and the Obama administration.

“When somebody gets 3½ million dollars from the mayor of Moscow,” Mr. Trump said.

“That’s is not true. That report is totally false,” Mr. Biden said.

A Senate Republican report by the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee says Mr. Trump is right, though it was not Moscow’s mayor, but his wife, whom the U.S. suspects of corruption in attaining billionaire status.

Hunter Biden received a single wire transfer of $3.5 million from Elena Baturina. The Senate report said she became a billionaire through illegal construction contracts awarded by her husband, since deceased.

This is based on Treasury Department reports received by committee Chairman Ron Johnson, Wisconsin Republican, and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican.

The Senate narrative is not specific, but the types of transaction records match the description of confidential suspicious activity reports that the Treasury issues when it suspects illegal activity.

The Senate report says, “On Feb. 14, 2014, Baturina wired $3.5 million to a Rosemont Seneca Thornton LLC (Rosemont Seneca Thornton) bank account for a ‘Consultancy Agreement.’ Rosemont Seneca Thornton is an investment firm co-founded by Hunter Biden that was incorporated on May 28, 2013 in Wilmington, Del.”

Russia invaded Crimea in Ukraine the month Ms. Baturina sent the money.

“Why did he get it?” Mr. Trump asked.

“That report was written for political reasons,” Mr. Biden said.

Mr. Trump asserted, “Once you became vice president, he made a fortune in Ukraine, in China, in Moscow and various other places.”

Mr. Biden responded, “That is not true.”

According to the senators’ Treasury records, it is true.

In April 2014, President Obama made Mr. Biden the point man in Ukraine, after the Russian invasion, to persuade leaders to rid the country of rampant corruption.

The next month, Hunter Biden showed up on the board of directors of the energy company Burisma Holdings, which the State Department considers corrupt, as it does its oligarch owner, Mykola Zlochevsky. Hunter Biden’s business partner, Devon Archer, already had secured a spot.

Over the years, Burisma paid the two more than $4 million. Treasury records show that 48 wire transfers from May 2014 to February 2016 totaled $3.4 million. The money went to Rosemont Seneca Bohai, a shell company run by Mr. Archer in partnership with a Chinese investment fund.

In 2014 and 2015, Burisma sent $700,000 directly to Hunter Biden. After Mr. Archer was arrested on fraud charges, Burisma sent Hunter Biden another $752,000.

On China, Vice President Biden promoted closer ties to the communist regime on many fronts. He traveled to China in 2013 on Air Force Two and took along Hunter, who met with Chinese businessmen.

“China ate your lunch, Joe,” Mr. Trump said Tuesday night. “And no wonder your son goes in and he takes out billions of dollars. He takes out billions of dollars to manage. He makes millions of dollars.”

Mr. Biden said, “None of that is true.”

The Bidens have adamantly denied reports that Hunter Biden’s investment firm received a $1 billion infusion.

But the Senate report documents extensive ties between Hunter Biden and various Chinese entities that produced millions of dollars in wire transfers.

In one example, China’s CEFC Infrastructure Investment wired $5 million to HudsonWest LLC, a New York company jointly owned by Hunter Biden and Chinese interests. HudsonWest then sent $4.7 million to Hunter Biden’s law firm. The next year, another $1 million was delivered.

Hunter Biden sent 20 wire transfers totaling $1.3 million to Vice President Biden’s brother James for consulting services. Treasury flagged the transfers as potentially criminal, the Senate report said.

When the bank contacted James Biden’s wife, Sara, to learn details, she refused to cooperate, the Senate report said.

“Hunter Biden has extensive connections to Chinese businesses and Chinese foreign nationals that are linked to the Communist government,” the Senate report said. “Those contacts bore financial fruit when his father was vice president and after he left office.”

The Senate report also said Hunter Biden sent money to Ukrainian and Russian women. The Treasury reports said the transactions are linked to “what appears to be an Eastern European prostitution or human trafficking ring.”

Mr. Johnson, the Senate homeland security panel chairman, wrote in a FoxNews.com column Tuesday that liberal news media have ignored his report showing disturbing ties between the Biden family and corrupt people.

The Republican Senate report summarized its Hunter Biden findings based on Treasury reports:

“The Treasury records acquired by the Chairmen show potential criminal activity relating to transactions among and between Hunter Biden, his family, and his associates with Ukrainian, Russian, Kazakh and Chinese nationals. In particular, these documents show that Hunter Biden received millions of dollars from foreign sources as a result of business relationships that he built during the period when his father was vice president of the United States and after.”

The report added:

“In addition to providing new and descriptive details about the nature, origin and extent of payments from Burisma Holdings to Hunter Biden, the documents acquired by the Committees also shed light on a much broader array of questionable financial transactions involving Hunter Biden, other members of the Biden family, and their associations with foreign nationals. These foreign nationals have questionable backgrounds that have been identified as being consistent with a range of criminal activities, including but not limited to organized prostitution and/or human trafficking, money laundering, fraud, and embezzlement.”

>>>/qresearch/11285347 Long thread of posts tying to Ukraine Burisma to U.S. Bidens BO HRC JK et al Kolomoiski Soros as godfather of shadow party

https://twitter.com/40_head/status/1319219948158283776

You're going to have a whole new understanding of Hunter Biden and Burisma once you read this thread. This is a more in depth look than you've probably ever seen on this topic. This evidence will blow your mind.

long thread of posts tying to Ukraine Burisma to U.S. Bidens BO HRC JK et al Kolomoiski Soros as godfather of shadow party

https://www.drugfree.org.au/images/pdf-files/library/soros/2019/SorosShadowParty-OchestratingAmerica'sDemise.pdf

https://sites.imsa.edu/acronym/2019/10/16/the-burisma-story/

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/874792/000114420409017936/v144694_10k.htm

https://johnbwellsnews.com/ukraine-piggy-bank-of-corrupt-u-s-democrats/

https://humanevents.com/2010/09/09/the-obamasoros-connection/

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/874792/000114420409019010/v145444_8k.htm

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/containers/fix062/874792/000114420410028709/v185739_sc14f1.htm

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/874792/000102189005000003/sunrise14f.htm

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/874792/000114420409047158/v159820_prer14c.htm

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/05/r-hunter-biden-declare-owns-new-ukrainian-employer-burisma-holdings.html

Go to >>6119 Current News for the continuation of this thread.