President Joe Biden, his son, Hunter Biden, and other Biden relatives and associates have received millions of dollars of payments from Romanian and Chinese sources, a memorandum of bank records published by the House Oversight Committee has revealed as Republicans on the committee raised “influence peddling” and other pay-for-play concerns dating from during and after Biden’s time as Vice President from Jan. 2009 to Jan. 2017.
Laying the evidence out in a bombshell press conference on May 10, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) stated the “Biden family, their associates, and their companies, received over $10 million from foreign nationals and their companies.”
Comer added, “We’re pretty confident that the President was very knowledgeable about what his family was doing… We just laid out that 16 of the 17 payments to the Biden’s from Romania occurred while Joe Biden was Vice President.”
On May 3, Comer stated in a joint release with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) that these payments could be a form of bribery: “The information provided by a whistleblower raises concerns that then-Vice President Biden allegedly engaged in a bribery scheme with a foreign national. The American people need to know if President Biden sold out the United States of America to make money for himself. Senator Grassley and I will seek the truth to ensure accountability for the American people.”
The memorandum appeared to contradict Biden’s Oct. 2020 claims in his presidential debate with former President Donald Trump that “My son has not made money in terms of this thing about, what are you talking about, China,” instead accusing his opponent of receiving money from China. “Nobody else has made money from China.”
But according to the memo, “The bank records refute President Biden’s statement. To date, President Biden has continued to deny that his family received money from China — despite bank records proving otherwise. In 2017 alone, bank records show President Biden’s family and their related companies received millions of dollars from Chinese foreign nationals’ companies. This amount does not include payments from Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Romania, Oman, or other foreign business deals the Committee is investigating; it also does not include any payments related to Hunter Biden’s interest in BHR Partners or Jonathan Li.”
Remarkably, though, these payments are apparently not currently subjected to federal public disclosure laws, and point to a significant gap the nation’s financial accountability regime for public officials. Per the memorandum, “The Committee seeks to craft legislative solutions aimed at deficiencies it has identified in the current legal framework regarding ethics laws and disclosure of financial interests related to the immediate family members of Vice Presidents and Presidents — deficiencies that may place American national security and interests at risk.”
The memo added, “The Committee is concerned that foreign nationals, including individuals with ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), have sought access and influence by engaging in lucrative business relationships with high profile political figures’ immediate family members, including members of the Biden family.”
So far, though, the committee is not certain what the payments were made for, as noted by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio): “Suspicious activity reports. The key word in that phrase is the word suspicious. There are a 170 of those reports, many of them put together by the Treasury Department of our government in the Obama-Biden Administration. So, 170 of those that the committee has reviewed — thousands of pages of bank records the committee has reviewed — and that has told us that there are now multiple as Mr. [Byron] Donalds just said multiple LLCs receiving money from foreign entities and paying that money out to multiple members of the Biden family.”
Jordan added, “And the fundamental question is the one Byron just raised for what. What did they do? What was the business? What service did they provide? What value did they add? What did they do to warrant receipt of the money? That is the fundamental question and no one seems to have an answer to that fundamental question.”
That is a really good question. And one thing is for certain, the House Oversight Committee does not appear to be ready to rest until it finds the answer. Stay tuned.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
