Posted on 09/11/2023 6:38:27 AM PDT by SJackson
[Editor’s note: Make sure to read Daniel Greenfield’s contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]
At first glance, Hunter Biden’s business dealings appear to be internationally opportunistic, leaping from one part of the world to the other, exploiting whatever openings emerged.
Closer scrutiny however suggests that Hunter and his business partners were piggybacking on the foreign and domestic policies of the Obama administration, converging on green energy investments at home, and Chinese and Ukrainian oligarchs looking to do business in America.
Hunter Biden’s perceived value to foreign interests was his inside track, through his father, and that was reinforced when his father showed up at restaurants or phoned into meetings. And while Hunter scored millions, there is growing evidence that the true scope of the deals on the agenda, which would have been in the billions, were never realized. As Joe Biden’s political career appeared to be over, a desperate Hunter began a downward spiral of drug abuse.
A key piece of the puzzle emerged with the revelations made by an FBI informant that Hunter Biden had tried to convince Burisma’s co-founder to launch an IPO by buying an American energy company. While the informant advised Burisma against the move, I speculated that Hunter might have been looking to get in on the ground floor of a major domestic energy deal that would have been worth billions by bringing together a U.S. company with Burisma.
J.E. Dyer, a former US Naval Intelligence officer who has spent a good deal of time investigating Biden’s scandals, has written an extended analysis that brings China into the picture.
Dyer points out that Hunter’s people were working with both Ukrainian and Chinese energy interests, Burisma and the CEFC Energy conglomerate which has been linked to China’s Communist Party. CEFC had provided Hunter with millions in investment capital through an entity known as Hudson West III. The question is where would all that money go?
In 2016, Ye Jianming, the CEFC chairman, announced that he wanted to expand “by acquiring global assets”. A year later, CEFC would try to buy a giant stake in Putin’s state-owned Rosneft company, but might Ye have been considering a deal that would bring American and Ukrainian energy assets into CEFC’s portfolio in what would have been a major coup for the company?
CEFC had been built around doing business in war zones like Sudan and Iraq, but Ye had bigger ambitions to bring in energy assets in safe and prosperous parts of the world. The PRC was too dependent on getting its energy from places that American and European companies didn’t want to go. Going into Ukraine, back then, might have seemed like a step up. And buying into America’s energy industry would be a crucial expansion into a prosperous enemy nation.
This clicked neatly with Ye’s double identity working with a People’s Liberation Army’s front group that was also collecting intelligence. To that end, Ye may have gifted Hunter an $80,000 diamond. Diamonds are a convenient way of moving vast sums of money around that are less likely to be tracked by the authorities. Giving Hunter a diamond also amounted to having potentially compromising materials on the son of the vice president and potential president.
Ye had previously intended to make the Czech Republic into China’s “Gateway to the European Union”, but Ukraine represented an even more vital supply line. Packaging together Burisma, Ukraine’s vital producer, an American energy company, and influence at the highest levels of the White House would have been the deal of a lifetime.
Furthermore, as Dyer notes, China wanted to secure liquid natural gas exports from the United States. Combining Burisma and an American energy company would have given CEFC and China critical control over natural gas production so vital to Europe and imports from America.
The national security implications of such an arrangement that would have provided vital pieces of China’s economic expansionism in America and around the world could have been catastrophic. Fortunately for the United States, Hunter had the worst luck in the world.
Both Burisma and CEFC were deeply corrupt organizations and they could not outrun their legal problems. While Joe Biden was able to intervene and get a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Burisma fired, its founder, Mykola Zlochevsky, continued struggling with investigations at home and abroad, and was arrested in absentia in 2020. Joe Biden would now be in a great position to allow Zlochevsky to come home, but Burisma long ago stopped paying Hunter’s bills.
In 2017, CEFC’s top lobbyist, Patrick Ho, was arrested in New York and charged with trying to bribe the president of Chad. A year later, Ye Jianming had been detained for economic crimes in his own home country and has since ‘disappeared’. The Bidens had built their business around deals with corrupt foreign oligarchs who were operating inside corrupt systems. Zlochevsky had been close to Ukraine’s former Russian-backed regime and was at odds with the new government. CEFC fell afoul of Xi’s consolidation of power conducted under the guise of cracking down on corruption. And at a crucial moment, Joe Biden no longer had any access.
Hunter might have hoped to bring Jianming and Zlochevsky together around an American business deal, instead Zlochevsky ended up in Cyprus and Jianming went missing. And while we don’t know what Hunter’s Chinese partners really thought of him, the FBI informant material shows that Burisma’s bosses had come to view Hunter with distrust and contempt. In a cutthroat business, Hunter was an unstable amateur whose only real asset was his last name. As Hillary Clinton shouldered Joe Biden out of the way, Hunter’s usefulness was rapidly disappearing.
In 2017, with Joe Biden out of office, Hunter sent a threatening text message to a Chinese investment partner, Henry Zhao of Bohai Harvest Fund Management. “I am sitting here with my father we would like to understand why the commitment has not been fulfilled,” he blustered. “I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction.”
Less than two weeks later, Hunter’s law firm got $100,000 from CEFC and then $5 million sent to Hudson West III, a joint investment firm, but by then Burisma had cut Hunter’s compensation sharply and a deal bringing together Ukraine, China and an American company was likely impossible. Burisma had too many legal issues and Joe Biden could no longer fix them. CEFC’s own fortunes would begin to unwind toward the end of the year leaving Hunter high and dry. With CEFC under investigation in the U.S., Hunter’s transfers were being flagged.
Unlike Zlochevsky and Burisma, CEFC and Ho seemed to have taken too long to realize that Hunter Biden was worthless and certainly couldn’t protect them against a criminal investigation. The Justice Department carefully avoided touching Hunter and Joe’s brother James, along with other politically connected figures on the American end, but swept up assorted foreigners.
On the other side of the ocean, China’s Communist regime finished the job. Ye had hoped to eclipse giants like Sinopec and the China National Petroleum Corporation, instead, like many other Chinese oligarchs, he discovered that Xi wanted consolidation not competition. The PRC was still going to remain a Communist system and Ye proved to be a threat rather than an asset. Had CEFC managed to bring together America, China and Ukraine, or successfully closed the deal for a major stake in Rosneft, Ye might have survived, but instead he failed.
Hunter’s downfall parallels that of Burisma and CEFC. As they spiral downward, he gets divorced, begins doing dangerous amounts of drugs and burning through his money.
By 2019, CEFC is done and Burisma is just about played out, Hunter Biden drops off his laptops at a repair shop and continues stumbling through the messy shambles of his life. But at least he’s better off than Ye, though not nearly as well off as Zlochevsky who is living the good life.
Having blown his big chance, Hunter is doing what addicts do, hitting bottom.
The original glorious dream that might have brought together a Chinese Communist energy company, a Ukrainian energy producer and Democratic Party political insiders primed to cash in on an IPO that might have been worth billions was also left behind along with so much else.
Hunter, like his Chinese partners, had flown too high, and like them he was falling back to earth.
ping
In 2017, with Joe Biden out of office, Hunter sent a threatening text message to a Chinese investment partner, Henry Zhao of Bohai Harvest Fund Management.
“I am sitting here with my father we would like to understand why the commitment has not been fulfilled,” he blustered. “I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction.”
Daniel Greenfield lays out the scope of Hunter Biden's dreams, plans and collapse in a way that other cannot, tying in Ukraine, China, the entire Biden family and the DNC ... well worth your time.
Ping out to the Daniel Greenfield Ping! List.
As always, please FReepmail me if you want on or off the esteemed Daniel Greenfield ping list.
Daniel Greenfield's website: The Sultan Knish blog
p
He’s not that smart...................
Closer scrutiny however suggests that Hunter and his business partners were piggybacking on the foreign and domestic policies of the Obama administration, converging on green energy investments at home, and Chinese and Ukrainian oligarchs looking to do business in America.
A key piece of the Biden/Obama corruption puzzle...a former
US Naval Intelligence officer who has been investigating
Biden’s scandals, has an extended analysis that brings
China into the picture.
Mr. Dyer points out that Hunter’s people were working with
<><>both Ukrainian and Chinese energy interests,
<><>Burisma and the CEFC Energy conglomerate linked to the CCP.
<><>CEFC provided Hunter with millions in investment capital thru “Hudson West III.”
<><> The question is where would all that money go?
<><>In 2016, CEFC Chair Ye Jianming, announced he wanted to expand “by acquiring global assets”.
<><>A year later, CEFC tried to buy a giant stake in Putin’s state-owned Rosneft company.
But might Ye have been considering a deal that would bring
American and Ukrainian energy assets into CEFC’s portfolio
in what would have been a major coup for the company?
Good point....but he could have gotten help...from Obama.
What the Chinese got out of paying millions to Hunter’s web of front companies has been a “mystery”.
It seems plausible that Chinese and Ukrainian crooks would be known to each other and engage in mutually beneficial operations, especially money laundering. Hunter might have created new connections, and since Ukraine was on the verge of expanding offshore oil & gas production, perhaps he was actually trying to create business opportunities.
Investigators need to consider whether Hunter’s “Chinese investments” were really a means of laundering funds from his Burisma shakedowns. Did “Burisma” or its oligarchic principals “invest” in any Chinese ventures or have other links to Chinese banking or business operations?
On Saturday 18 November 2017, Chinese official Chi Ping “Patrick” Ho, then director of the China Energy Fund Committee (CEFC), was arrested by federal authorities of the U.S. Southern District of New York on bribery charges under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Ho and a Senegalese national, Cheikh Gadio, were charged with a bribery scheme entailing money-laundering (through the U.S. affiliate of an international bank) and involving officials of Chad and Uganda. (I’ve written about this story before; start here.)
The charges were unveiled the following week, with formal indictment following in December 2017. Ho was convicted on multiple counts under the FCPA in a jury trial in 2018, and sentenced in March of 2019 to three years in prison. (Curiously, Ho’s sentencing fell during the crowded late-March 2019 interlude when a host of other things related to the Bidens and Ukraine were occurring.)
The period of Ho’s and Gadio’s alleged offenses ran from 2014 to 2016.
Followers of the Patrick Ho saga are aware that Ho was the CCP-embedded Chinese official who in 2017 courted the Biden family with money and pricey shopping expeditions, in concert with the even more senior Ye Jianming, chairman of the CEFC. It was hoped that CEFC, a state investment company, would find common ground with Rosemont Seneca and its joint ventures with Chinese backers for an energy project, which Biden emails suggest involved natural gas. The 2017 timeline continued right up to Ho’s arrest and indictment by the Trump DOJ.
Patrick Ho. Wikipedia
After Ho’s arrest in the U.S., Ye Jianming went missing in China in March 2018. This was during Ho’s prosecution in the Southern District of New York. In the span of less than six months, the Biden enterprises’ main contacts for their active 2017 project with China were taken off the playing field. Patrick Ho’s arrest and prosecution can be seen as the catalyst for this shift.
at least two of those episodes related directly to the Bidens’ interests. One was the interruption of Patrick Ho’s career. The other will become clear below.
But for a preview at the outset, consider an excited utterance from Hunter Biden in an audio recording from shortly after Ye Jianming went missing. (The recording was found on Hunter’s laptop, and according to the Daily Mail was incidental to a recorded interaction with a prostitute on 11 May 2018.)
In the recording, Hunter laments his unhappy state with Ho being prosecuted and Ye unreachable: “I have another New York Times reporter calling about my representation of Patrick Ho – the f****** spy chief of China who started the company that my partner [i.e., Ye], who is worth $323 billion, founded and is now missing. The richest man in the world is missing who was my partner.”
CEFC chairman Ye Jianming in his visible period. South China Morning Post video, YouTube.
Hunter complains about being hounded by the New York Times and the SDNY U.S. Attorney. (Which incidentally is a clue to why Ye Jianming was spirited out of the United States. There was good reason for China and some U.S. interests to want to prevent Mr. Ye being hounded by the SDNY Attorney as a witness.)
ping
Genghis Khan had more luck bringing Ukraine into China, but it didn’t last ...
Oh what a web we weave when we................................
foxnews.com
By Jessica Chasmar, Cameron Cawthorne Fox News
Published September 11, 2023
Another Biden bought by China
Biden’s niece (sister’s daughter) co-opts taxpayers
Pockets tax dollars as Obama’s special asst
for U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue at Treasury
Colludes w/ Hunter’s company WRT Chinese sovereign wealth
Hunter Biden’s firm was courting state-run China Investment Corporation for potential investments. joe Biden’s niece emailed Hunter and the president of his company information about China Investment Corporation (CIC), China’s largest sovereign wealth fund. She was a family hire-—in the U.S. Treasury Dept during the Obama-Biden admin.
Casey Owens was serving as a special assistant for the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue at the Treasury Department when she discussed the CIC, which is state-owned and manages part of the Chinese government’s foreign exchange reserves, with Hunter and his longtime business partner, Eric Schwerin.
At the time, Hunter’s now-defunct Rosemont Seneca Advisors, where Schwerin served as president, was courting the CIC for potential investments.
ERIC SCHWERIN’S ROLE IN HUNTER BIDEN’S BUSINESS DEALS COULD BE MISSING KEY IN GOP INVESTIGATIONS
On April 12, 2010, Owens emailed Hunter and Schwerin a schedule from a CIC investment conference that took place a couple of weeks earlier.
“FYI on recent CIC investment conference at a resort in Sanya, on Hainan Island, over the weekend of March 27-28,” Owens colluded.
A Thornton Group press release dated that same day – April 12, 2010 – said the company’s chairman, James Bulger, and Hunter visited Beijing just three days earlier and met with CIC Chief Investment Officer Gao Xiqing, among others, according to the Republican Senate report released in September 2020.
On April 12, 2010, Casey Owens emailed Hunter Biden and Eric Schwerin a schedule from a CIC investment conference. (Fox News)
A feature article about Owens published months later by the Tower Hill Bulletin said she and her team had traveled to Beijing in May 2010 with a U.S. delegation led by Obama Treasury Secy Timothy Geithner.
A photo of Owens in the article showed her receiving a “small jade vase as a birthday gift” from China’s then-vice minister of finance, Zhu Guangyao. According to the Ministry of Finance website, its primary function is to implement the decisions and policies of the Chinese Communist Party in the area of public finance.
The Bulletin article said Owens’ team and Zhu “worked very closely during the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue.”
Weeks after returning from Beijing, Owens emailed Schwerin a Bloomberg News article about CIC, titled, “China’s CIC May Post Record Year for 2009 as Markets Recover,” which Schwerin then forwarded to Hunter on July 23, 2010.
Casey Owens emailed Eric Schwerin a Bloomberg News article about the CIC on July 23, 2010. (Fox News)
Then on Aug. 4, 2010, Schwerin introduced Owens to Meridian Investments Vice Chairman Jack Casey via email after Schwerin said he had a conversation with him earlier that day about “GSEs and China.”
“Jack,” Schwerin wrote. “Good seeing you at lunch today. Per our conversation regarding GSEs and China, I wanted to put you in touch with Hunter’s cousin, Casey Owens, who is at the Treasury Department and works on the Strategic Economic Dialogue. I have cc:ed Casey on this email. Feel free to reach out to her directly, she’s expecting to hear from you.”
“Jack, Happy to speak at your convenience,” Owens responded the next morning. “Best, Casey.” Schwerin later forwarded the email thread to Hunter.
A person familiar with Rosemont Seneca’s interest in CIC told Fox News Digital that Owens was most likely giving the company intel to increase their likelihood of getting CIC to invest in its fund clients. However, the person said they are not aware of the company making any deals with CIC.
Fox News Digital previously reported that in early 2011, Hunter and his partners at Rosemont Seneca had discussed making contacts to expand their energy investments in various state-owned investment funds, including in China, Ireland, Oman and Qatar.
On March 8, 2011, Schwerin sent Hunter and Rosemont Seneca co-founder Devon Archer an email containing the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute’s (SWFI) current list of the top sovereign wealth funds, which are state-owned, and their rankings at the time.
“Let’s discuss today what else we can be doing to connect with these groups,” Archer responded, adding that Rosemont Seneca was “already working” with several funds on the list, including two in China.
Archer’s March 2011 email to Hunter and Schwerin added he was scheduling a meeting for that April with the CIC.
“CIC- scheduling meeting for April 21st,” Archer wrote.
The SWFI list said CIC had over $332 billion in assets at the time of Archer’s email.
The New York Post previously reported that Hunter and Archer traveled to China and met with the CIC in April 2011.
On May 10, 2011, just before she left the Treasury, Owens emailed an account with the nickname “Uncle Joe” at auks@att.blackberry.net, and she talked about the vice president’s remarks a day earlier during the opening session of the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue.
“Uncle Joe,” Owens wrote. “Just got home from work and couldn’t wait to send you an email. Today was truly a memorable day for me. I keep thinking about Mommom. Can you imagine her seeing us huddled up back stage together? She would have loved it. It chokes me up. I have so much to learn! Sitting back there with you was very, very humbling. I was just blown away. You ALWAYS make time to talk to me. Always. But today was really incredible. I still can’t believe you took the time to discuss the issues with me.”
On May 10, 2011, Casey Owens emailed an account with the nickname “Uncle Joe” at auks@att.blackberry.net. (Fox News)
“And your remarks,” she continued. “That was really something else, Uncle Joe. What a way to exit the Treasury. I’m almost embarrassed by how deeply today has impacted me. I’m simply happy to be close to you, and I just wanted to say thank you for including me. Love Casey.”
The “auks” account later forwarded Owens’ email to Hunter, Beau Biden and Valerie Biden Owens, Owens’ mother.
According to Marco Polo, the “auks” account is another pseudonym used by the then–vice president and appears in multiple email exchanges on Hunter’s laptop. “Auks” is the mascot of Archmere Academy, where Biden and his son attended high school.
Owens, who now goes by Castello, left the Treasury in July 2011 and is currently an executive at Starbucks, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Owens, Casey, Schwerin, the Treasury, the White House and Hunter’s lawyer did not respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.
Jessica Chasmar is a digital writer on the politics team for Fox News and Fox Business. Story tips can be sent to Jessica.Chasmar@fox.com.
It looks like Mr. Greenfield connected all of the dots.
Wonder how many democrat party members had side deals in the operation?.
They didn’t put Biden in the WH because of his governing skills.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.