One of Hunter Biden‘s former business partners told Congress in a closed-door interview this week that he witnessed firsthand how President Joe Biden was involved with his family members’ business dealings with a Chinese energy conglomerate and discussed how Joe Biden met with associates to further the dealings.
Tony Bobulinski said, according to a transcript released by House Republicans on Friday, that he himself met with Joe Biden “multiple times” in 2017 and that Hunter Biden had introduced them in the context of Bobulinski’s work with the energy company.
That company, CEFC, was tightly interwoven with the Chinese government, and Bobulinski said he remembered asking Joe Biden’s brother James, who was also involved in their venture, how the family was getting away with using Joe Biden’s political prominence and influence to secure work with CEFC.
“And I was asking [James Biden], ‘How are you doing it? It doesn’t make any sense. Aren’t you guys concerned that if Joe does run for President of the United States in the future that you guys are doing business directly with the Chinese?'” Bobulinski said.
“He looks at me and sort of chuckles and says, ‘Plausible deniability,'” Bobulinski said.
Many of Bobulinski’s claims first surfaced in 2020, and Joe Biden responded by repeatedly denying ever speaking to his son or his son’s associates about their business ventures. As evidence to contradict that denial has surfaced, such as messages uncovered by Congress and whistleblower testimony, Joe Biden has since tempered his denials and has more recently said through a spokesman that he was not “in business” with his family members.
Bobulinski, a Navy veteran, described during the interview with Congress how he first engaged in 2015 in discussions about forming an entity with CEFC to take on investment projects in the U.S. and elsewhere. The entity would be run by Bobulinski; Hunter Biden; Rob Walker, who testified in his own interview with Congress earlier this month, and James Gilliar.
Walker testified in his own interview that Joe Biden also directly, albeit briefly, met with CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming and other associates of the Chinese company at a small luncheon in Washingotn, D.C., in early 2017.
Bobulinski said the associates were also aiming to have Joe Biden meet the chairman a second time that year, this time in New York, but that the meeting did not pan out.
“I met Joe Biden face-to-face. These guys were talking about having Joe Biden come to New York and sit face-to-face with Chairman Ye while we were formalizing this deal,” Bobulinski said. “And for every one of these guys to now have amnesia or, like, you know, claim that, ‘Oh, Hunter wasn’t really talking about his father’ is just absurd. The American people deserve the truth.”
Bobulinski said he first began communicating extensively with his fellow associates about getting their project, called SinoHawk, off the ground in 2017. One of those messages included the now infamous email written by Gilliar in 2017 about suggestions for how they would split profits. The email included a question about whether the group should set aside “10 held by H for the big guy?” and Bobulinski testified that the “big guy” was “100%” a reference to Joe Biden, though there is no evidence Joe Biden ever received money associated with SinoHawk.
Bobulinski’s testimony, as expected, provided House Republicans with their strongest arguments yet of Joe Biden’s direct involvement in one of his family’s foreign business ventures. Bobulinski first publicly came forward with his claims in a press conference in October 2020, raising alarm about Joe Biden ahead of his presidential election.
Democrats have questioned Bobulinski’s credibility, and Hunter Biden himself demanded last year that the Department of Justice open an investigation into Bobulinski for making what he said were false statements during an interview Bobulinski voluntarily gave to the FBI about the Biden family.
“The minority seems to want to, like, bifurcate it and differentiate between relationship development and actual business. The relationship development is business. Joe Biden walking into a room and shaking Chairman Ye’s hand is business, in the world I live in,” Bobulinski said.
Hunter Biden eventually angrily shut Bobulinski out of their venture, according to text messages Hunter Biden once wrote that were obtained by the House Ways and Means Committee.
The messages revealed that the first son became furious with Bobulinski, calling him a “one man wrecking ball” and a “bully with an inferiority complex.”
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) attempted during the interview to paint Bobulinski as disgruntled and therefore motivated to speak negatively about the Bidens.
“Hunter and Jim defrauded me at the end of July,” Bobulinski told Goldman. “And at the end of July 2017, that’s well-documented, Hunter Biden invokes his father to basically shake down and extort the Chinese to not send the money to SinoHawk Holdings and send it directly to a new entity that he worked overtime to form so he could put the money in his own pocket and Jim Biden’s pocket.”
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“That clearly upsets you,” Goldman replied, asking Bobulinski if he was “still angry.”
“Have you ever been defrauded in your life?” Bobulinski responded.
