Biden family received more than $1m after 2017 Chinese wire payments, House panel reveals

New Delhi: President Joe Biden’s daughter-in-law Hallie Biden was among several family members who received payouts after a Hunter Biden associate received a $3 million wire payment from a Chinese energy company, a House committee revealed Thursday.

According to a memo issued by the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, Biden family members received over $1 million in payments over three months after the Chinese wire transfer was cleared in 2017.

Detailing the payments, the memo further said that several payments were also sent to companies linked to Biden’s brother James Biden and son Hunter Biden in addition to Hallie Biden. An unknown account identified only as “Biden” also received transfers from the company owned by Hunter Biden associate Rob Walker in the months after the $3 million wire cleared in 2017, added the memo.

Walker owns Robinson Walker LLC, which controlled the account that received the wire transfer.

“From the bank records, it appears that the Biden family received approximately one-third of the money obtained from the China wire,” said the memo from committee members investigating the Biden families’ business deals around the world.

Hallie Biden received two payments

As per the bank records obtained by the committee, Hallie Biden received two payments in 2017 totaling $35,000 from Walker’s company after he received the multimillion-dollar payment from State Energy HK Ltd., a Chinese company, on 1 March of that year, months after Biden ended his term as vice president.

Hallie Biden is the widow of Beau Biden, who died of brain cancer in 2015. She became romantically involved with her brother-in-law Hunter Biden after Beau’s death.

It was unclear what services Biden associates provided to Walker “to obtain this exorbitant amount of money” The Washington Times quoted Rep. James Comer, the Kentucky Republican who chairs the committee, as saying.

“The oversight committee is concerned about the national security implications resulting from President Biden’s family receiving millions of dollars from foreign nationals,” Comer said, adding, “We will continue to follow the money trail and facts to determine if President Biden is compromised by his family’s business schemes and if there is a national security threat.”

The memo said committee investigators are particularly concerned “why Hallie Biden — publicly reported to work as a school counselor — received money” from Walker’s business.

The memo also notes that a company affiliated with James Gilliar, another Biden family associate, received more than $1 million from Walker’s business account on 2 March, 2017, the day after the Chinese wire transfer.

The payment details were revealed in bank records obtained by the committee in response to a recent subpoena issued to the Bank of America. The committee subpoenaed more than a decade of records related to Hunter Biden’s business dealings.

Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the committee, disclosed the 27 February subpoena in a scathing letter accusing Republicans of carrying out a one-sided investigation into the Biden family. He accused Republicans of overlooking suspected conflicts of interest and foreign influence under President Trump.

Comer justified the subpoena by saying that “by 2017, Biden family members and their associates, including John R. Walker, formed a joint venture with CEFC China executives.”

CEFC China is a defunct Chinese energy conglomerate with suspected ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

“Democrats described our subpoena as providing nothing more than records for Papa John’s and Starbucks, but they failed to mention the records we’ve received documenting the Biden family’s business schemes,” Comer said. “Over the course of several years, members of the Biden family and their companies received over $1.3 million in payments from accounts related to their associate, Rob Walker.”

When asked for comment on the financial records revealing the more than $1 million to members of the Biden family, the White House did not deny the findings, but instead slammed Comer and the committee’s investigation into the Biden family.

“After a disgusting attack lamenting that the President’s deceased son Beau was never prosecuted while he was alive, Congressman Comer has now decided to go after Beau’s widow,” said White House spokesman Ian Sams said, referring to comments Comer made earlier this month about the late Beau Biden’s campaign contributions.

Centerpiece of investigation

Comer has made the Biden family’s financial transactions the centerpiece of an investigation into the long trail of business ventures involving the president and his son.

On Tuesday, Comer revealed that the Treasury Department had begun handing over documents related to the investigation after a standoff with committee Republicans.

Committee Republicans say the Treasury Department is holding on to nearly 150 suspicious activity reports related to Hunter Biden. Suspicious activity reports give banks a mechanism to flag transactions for the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

Republicans have been engaged for months in a fruitless back-and-forth with the Treasury Department to obtain additional information on suspected financial transactions related to Hunter Biden that US banks have flagged as suspicious.

Comer has accused the agency of obstructing the committee’s investigation into the Biden family by refusing to hand over the suspicious activity reports. He said such reports have been made available to members of Congress for decades.

In a November report detailing Hunter Biden’s far-flung business deals that have raised eyebrows for years about potential influence peddling, committee Republicans cited a publicly available suspicious activity report that details “93 wires between 2 March, 2014 and 8 February, 2019 totaling $2,461,962.60” between Biden associates and “a Shanghai-based investment fund controlled by the Bank of China.”

In addition to pursuing negotiations with energy tycoons connected to the Chinese Communist Party, Hunter Biden—who formerly served on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company—is also accused of stealing more than $3 million from a Russian businesswoman who is the widow of a former Moscow mayor.

Citing evidence obtained from Hunter Biden’s laptop and through whistleblowers, Comer said his committee had uncovered a “decade-long pattern of influence peddling, national security risks and political cover-ups” committed by the Biden family with the knowledge and involvement of the president.

With inputs from agencies

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