Freshly leaked emails suggest that Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, stood to make tens of millions of dollars working for a Chinese energy firm, and allegedly called a deal with the firm’s chairman “interesting to me and my family.”
The emails – supposedly recovered from a laptop in a Delaware computer repair shop – were published by the New York Post on Thursday, one day after the paper published emails that appeared to show Hunter had introduced his father to a Ukrainian energy executive. Joe Biden has previously denied any involvement in his son’s foreign business dealings, and the story was touted by President Donald Trump as evidence of corruption in the Biden family.
According to the latest tranche of emails, Hunter Biden pursued an unspecified business venture in 2017 with the Shanghai-based CEFC China Energy Co, with his pay described as “850.” Additionally, Hunter would own 20 percent of the venture’s equity, and hold on to another 10 percent, “for the big guy.”
It is unknown whether “the big guy” is a reference to Joe Biden or someone else involved in the venture.
Another 2017 email apparently describes Hunter’s business relationship with Ye Jianming, CEFC’s chairman. In it, Hunter describes a three-year contract with Ye, who was to pay him $10 million per year “based on introductions alone.” The Democratic candidate’s son also describes swapping this deal out for “a much more lasting and lucrative arrangement” with the Chinese executive to create a holding company, with both men holding a 50 percent stake.
A written flowchart was also found on the laptop, illustrating the structure of a company called ‘Hudson West,’ split 50/50 between Hunter and a man referred to as “Chairman.” According to a report by Senate Republicans released last month, a company called Hudson West III opened a line of credit a month after the email.
A photo dated Aug. 1, 2017, shows a handwritten flowchart of the ownership of “Hudson West” split 50/50 between two entities ultimately controlled by Hunter Biden and someone identified as “Chairman.” pic.twitter.com/MLbSGCOwNO
Hunter Biden, along with his uncle James and aunt Sara, then used credit cards in the company name to splurge on more than $100,000 “worth of extravagant items, including airline tickets and multiple items at Apple Inc. stores, pharmacies, hotels and restaurants,” the Senate report claimed.
Another email unearthed by the Post shows a September 2017 ‘Attorney Engagement Letter’ between Hunter and Chi Ping Patrick Ho, a former Hong Kong government official. According to the letter, Ho agreed to pay Biden a $1 million retainer for “Counsel to matters related to US law and advice pertaining to the hiring and legal analysis of any US Law Firm or Lawyer.” A year later, Ho would be convicted by a court in Manhattan for paying $3 million in bribes to secure business deals in Africa, including oil rights in Chad.
The Biden family’s involvement in China was not a secret before the current email leak, and President Donald Trump has long accused Joe and Hunter of being tight with Beijing. These accusations stem mostly from Hunter’s position on the board of Rosemont Seneca Partners, an equity firm. Rosemont Seneca raised a billion dollars from Chinese state sources in 2013 to create an investment fund, days after Joe Biden flew to Beijing on an official visit. A representative for the fund told the New Yorker last year that Hunter introduced Joe to Chinese executive Jonathan Li during the trip. Li would go on to become the fund’s CEO.
The Biden campaign has dismissed both rounds of emails published by the New York Post as “disinformation.” President Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, was the middleman who received the emails from the computer repair shop and handed them to the Post, and Hunter Biden’s lawyer, George Mesires, wrote off his information as dishonest and accused him of pushing “widely discredited conspiracy theories about the Biden family.”
Giuliani has promised to reveal more Biden family scandals before next month’s election. “I have the entire hard drive and the New York Post has only published about five percent of it,” the lawyer and former New York City mayor told pro-Trump news outlet OANN on Wednesday night. “There’s plenty more.”
Speaking at a rally in Iowa that same night, Trump described the Bidens as “grifters and crooks.”
The Post’s first story caused uproar online, as did the decision by Twitter and Facebook to reduce its visibility on their platforms. Conservatives accused the tech firms of using censorship to protect the Bidens, while Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said he stood by his platform’s decision to ban links to “hacked information.”
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