OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, such as it is, has gotten off to a rocky start, just as new allegations of corruption and scandal engulf him and his son, Hunter Biden.
Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodríguez on Friday canceled an MSNBC interview following U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s announcement that he appointed a questionable U.S. attorney as special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden’s foreign business deals, The New York Times reported.
The Times reported that the campaign canceled the interview so it could “avoid facing a litany of questions about the president’s son, according to two people familiar with the scheduling.”
The cancellation led The Western Journal to note: “It’s a bad sign when the Biden camp dodges a left-wing cable network with a history of feeding softball questions to Democrats.”
The GOP-led House has been investigating the Bidens since taking control of the chamber during the 2022 midterm elections. The House Oversight Committee, especially, has launched a wide-ranging probe that has allegedly uncovered a substantial amount of corruption evidence, as noted on the committee’s website.
“Since taking the gavel in January, the Committee on Oversight and Accountability has accelerated its investigation of the Biden family’s domestic and international business practices to determine whether the Biden family has been targeted by foreign actors, President Biden is compromised, and our national security is threatened,” the site notes.
“Records obtained through the Committee’s subpoenas to date reveal that the Bidens and their associates have received over $20 million in payments from foreign entities,” it notes further, adding some examples:
1) Romania: On September 28, 2015, Vice President Biden welcomed Romanian President Klaus Iohannis to the White House. Within five weeks of this meeting, a Romanian businessman involved with a high-profile corruption prosecution in Romania, Gabriel Popoviciu, began depositing a Biden associate’s bank account, which ultimately made their way into Biden family accounts. Popoviciu made sixteen of the seventeen payments, totaling over $3 million, to the Biden associate account while Joe Biden was Vice President. Biden family accounts ultimately received approximately $1.038 million. The total amount from Romania to the Biden family and their associates is over $3 million.
2) China- CEFC: On March 1, 2017—less than two months after Vice President Joe Biden left public office—State Energy HK Limited, a Chinese company, wired $3 million to a Biden associate’s account. This is the same bank account used in the above “Romania” section. After the Chinese company wired the Biden associate account the $3 million, the Biden family received approximately $1,065,692 over a three-month period in different bank accounts. Additionally, the CEFC Chairman gives Hunter Biden a diamond worth $80,000. Lastly, CEFC creates a joint venture with the Bidens in the summer of 2017. The timeline lays out the “WhatsApp” messages and subsequent wires from the Chinese to the Bidens of $100,000 and $5 million. The total amount from China, specifically with CEFC and their related entities, to the Biden family and their associates is over $8 million.
There are also Biden family ties to money from Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine interests, according to the committee’s alleged findings.
“On February 14, 2014, a Russian oligarch and Russia’s richest woman, Yelena Baturina, wired a Rosemont Seneca entity $3.5 million. On March 11, 2014, the wire was split up: $750,000 was transferred to Devon Archer, and the remainder was sent to Rosemont Seneca Bohai, a company Devon Archer and Hunter Biden split equally. In spring of 2014, Yelena Baturina joined Hunter Biden and Devon Archer to share a meal with then-Vice President Biden at a restaurant in Washington, D.C. The total amount from Russia to the Biden family and their associates is $3.5 million,” the Oversight Committee site notes.
Some Democrats, including Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota, have said the corruption allegations are damaging to Joe Biden’s re-election.
“This is exactly, exactly why, I’m trying to raise the alarm,” Phillips told Politico on Friday following the special counsel appointment of U.S. Attorney David Weiss. “It is another reason why I wish this call to action that I’m trying to inject into the Democratic Party would be heard.”
Weiss has been investigating Hunter since 2018 but failed to bring any charges. He was also responsible for helping craft the “sweetheart” plea deal to keep Hunter out of jail permanently that fell apart in a federal courtroom in Delaware last month.
