REALITY CHECK Joe Biden flew to China on AF2 with Hunter and Hunter's daughter in tow in 2013.
"They said" Hunter was there "just as a family member," on vacation. Now we know that was a blatant lie.
Once in Beijing, our man in China, Hunter, didn’t just vacation....and go sightseeing.
<><> Hunter had meetings with his Chinese bank partners.
<><> Hunter arranged for his dad to meet with one of the Chinese partners.
No less than ten days later, Chinese Communist bankers approved millions to go to Hunter’s firm.....and a hard-to-get Chinese business license issued by Shanghai authorities that brought the Hunter/Chinese partnership into existence, with Hunter Biden a member of the board.
To this very day, Hunter controls a 10% stake in that firm” (said to be worth about $50 million).
At the time, it seemed mildly noteworthy, but not particularly unusual: then-Vice President Joe Biden, traveling to China on an official visit, had brought his son Hunter Biden along. And when the group appeared in public together in Beijing during the 2013 trip, there were all the typical trappings of a mini-family vacation tacked on to a business trip.
What wasn’t known then, Hunter Biden was forming a Chinese private equity fund that was planning to raise big money from Communist China. Hunter Biden has acknowledged meeting with Jonathan Li, a Chinese banker and his partner in the fund during the trip, although his spokesman says it was "a social visit."
Throughout the tax-paid trip, Hunter Biden seemed to duck in and out, sometimes joining his father at events and red-carpet arrival ceremonies, and at other times following his own itinerary, presumably with his daughter Finnegan. As is customary, the White House did not provide details about what the vice president’s relatives were doing when they were not part of his public events.
With Hunter's daughter, Finnegan, in tow, the Bidens sipped tea in a Confucian-style teahouse,
leafed through books at local shops, and treated themselves to mid-afternoon ice cream.....all on the taxpayers' dime.
THE BIDENS' TAX-PAID VISIT TO A CHINESE TEAHOUSE IS MEMORIALIZED IN OBAMA'S WH ARCHIVES