He’s Joe-ing soft on China
It took a certain bloodless chutzpah for the president to place his scandal-ridden son front and center at a White House function last week. Hunter Biden, 52, popped up at Thursday’s Medal of Freedom ceremony, to glad-hand and network from his front-row perch even as he awaits indictment by a grand jury in Delaware over his shady foreign business dealings, most lucratively in China.
Just one day earlier, FBI Director Christopher Wray and his British MI5 counterpart made a rare joint public appearance in London to sound the alarm over the growing “serious security and economic threat” posed by China, which aims to steal our intellectual property and corrupt our politics.
Also on Wednesday, US counterintelligence officials issued a bulletin to state and local officials, warning of an escalating campaign by China to manipulate and influence politicians to push Washington for China-friendly policies.
The threat is not exactly new. The Trump administration pursued aggressive measures to rein in China’s growing assertiveness and espionage activities.
Yet, Joe Biden has gone soft on China since becoming president. Here are a few examples:
He diverted at least a million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, according to Reuters, to Chinese state-owned gas giant Sinopec, which Hunter had invested in through his ten percent stake in Chinese private equity firm BHR.
He disbanded the China Initiative, a national security program set up by the Trump administration to combat China’s economic espionage at universities and research institutions.
He revoked Trump-era restrictions against TikTok, instead promising a “national security review” which has led to no action for over a year. The world’s fastest-growing social media platform, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, reportedly has repeatedly accessed US users’ private personal data.
In another unwinding of hardline Trump policies, the Biden administration granted the Chinese tech giant’s Huawei a license to purchase chips used in automobile manufacturing, Reuters reported last year.
He has not pressed China on the origins of COVID-19.
He suspended tariffs on Chinese solar panels.
He reportedly is contemplating lifting further Trump tariffs against Chinese imports, for no discernible benefit to America, with economists warning that any effect on soaring inflation would be minimal and short-lived.
It is astonishing that such generous concessions are even being contemplated while China has become Vladimir Putin’s top financier in the war on Ukraine, by buying discounted Russian oil and thus allowing the Kremlin to withstand Western sanctions.
This munificence to China adds to well-founded concerns that Joe Biden is compromised by the Chinese Communist Party, given all the evidence on Hunter’s laptop about millions of dollars that flowed from China to his son and brother, Jim Biden.
To be fair, Biden deserves praise for his involvement in both AUKUS, the trilateral security pact forged last year between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the US, and the QUAD alliance with Japan, India and Australia, the brainchild of recently assassinated former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe to counter China’s influence in the Indo-Pacific.
But until he comes clean about his role in his family’s influencepeddling operation in China during his vice presidency there will always be suspicions about his motives and questions about the risk to national security.
Instead, his administration is stymying congressional attempts to investigate the corruption.
The Treasury Department has begun to refuse requests for Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) connected with Hunter and Jim Biden and associates, which banks are required to file if they have concerns about a foreign transaction.
Over 150 of these SARs were crucial to establish the money trail into Biden bank accounts from China, Ukraine and Russia in the investigations so far by Republican Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson.
In a letter last week to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Rep. James Comer, the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, accused Treasury of running “cover” for Hunter with a new rule requiring Democrat sign-off for financial documents.
The sensitivity of these documents can be seen in two hitherto unpublished Suspicious Activity Reports exclusively obtained by The Post from nonprofit research outfit Marco Polo — one of which refers to Joe Biden by name.
The first, filed by JP Morgan Chase, reports 93 concerning wire transactions between Feb. 3, 2014, and Aug. 2, 2019, involving Hunter, his business partners, Devon Archer, Eric Schwerin, Hunter’s firms Owasco and Rosemont Seneca Advisors, the corrupt energy company Burisma — which paid him $1 million a year while his father was VP — and Bohai Harvest RST, the Chinese private equity firm in which Hunter held a ten percent stake.
“The SAR is being filed to report wire activity involving parties linked to a Politically Exposed Person (‘PEP’) with negative media for possible political corruption; as well as alleged business conflicts involving related companies and individuals,” the bank states in its report.
“Research revealed [Hunter] is an American lawyer and PEP, as he is the second son of former Vice President Joe Biden [and] worked for a US-based company which received monthly transfers exceeding $166,000 per month from BURISMA while the vice president was leading US policy with the Ukrainian government . . . BOHAI HARVEST allegedly operates and works with a number of funds and the structure brought [Hunter] in close proximity to influential Chinese government and business figures.”
Among the transactions highlighted in the report are 16 wires totaling $119,095.31 from an account at the Bank of China and four wires from Burisma totaling $222,566.97.
There is also an amount of $84,400.16 that Hunter sent in 10 wires to “various counterparties” at a Wells Fargo account between Aug. 14, 2017, and Oct. 2, 2018.
The second SAR relating to Hunter from JP Morgan Chase refers to “human trafficking” suspicions and again described the president’s son as a “Politically Exposed Person.” This report originated from an “external referral for transactions” in which Hunter or his private firm Owasco sent money to recipients with ties to the “adult entertainment industry and potential association with prostitution [or who] were listed in prior SAR filings related to human trafficking.”
The amount was for $149,843 between Oct. 24, 2016, and May 10, 2019.
The president’s repeated claims that he knew nothing about Hunter’s foreign business dealings are not credible in light of mounting evidence to the contrary, including a voicemail found on Hunter’s abandoned laptop in which he expresses relief that a New York Times article about one of Hunter and Jim’s Chinese deals had barely skimmed the surface.
“I think you’re clear,” Joe tells Hunter.
When Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked last week about why there was “a voicemail of the president talking to his son about his overseas business dealings if the
president has said he’s never spoken to his son about his overseas business?” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to answer.
“I am not going to talk about alleged materials from the laptop,” she said.
The White House cannot keep ignoring the Hunter problem engulfing Joe Biden.
It’s not going away.