Politics

Hunter Biden Sought To Avoid Registering As Foreign Agent In Chinese Business Venture, Text Message Shows

(Photo by Logan Mock-Bunting/Getty Images)

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Chuck Ross Investigative Reporter
Font Size:
  • Hunter Biden wanted to avoid registering as a foreign agent as part of a deal with a Chinese energy company, according to text messages obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. 
  • In a message to Tony Bobulinski on May 1, 2017, Hunter Biden also proposed creating a U.S.-based shell company so that the joint venture could bid on contracts with the U.S. government. 
  • A day after sending the message, Hunter Biden set up a meeting with his father, Joe Biden, and Bobulinski in Los Angeles.
  • He claims that Joe Biden is referenced as an equity shareholder in early documents for the Chinese business deal. 

Hunter Biden suggested setting up a shell company to do business with a Chinese firm in order to avoid registering as a foreign agent, and to be able to bid on contracts with the U.S. government, according to documents from May 2017 obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

A day after sending the message, Biden arranged a meeting between his father, Joe Biden, and Tony Bobulinski, one of the prospective partners in a deal with CEFC China Energy, a Chinese conglomerate whose chairman had links to the communist regime in Beijing. (RELATED: ‘He Was Plainly Familiar’: Hunter Biden’s Ex-Business Partner Says Joe Biden Was Aware Of Overseas Dealings)

“We don’t want to have to register as foreign agents under the FCPA which is much more expansive than people who should know choose not to know,” Hunter Biden wrote to Bobulinski on May 1, 2017, according to a message obtained by the DCNF.

“No matter what it will need to be a US company at some level in order for us to make bids on federal and state funded projects.”

Biden appeared to be referring to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) as well as the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

Biden did not explain in the messages why he thought the venture with CEFC would violate FARA or FCPA without the buffer of a U.S. shell company.

A joint report from the Senate Homeland Security and Senate Finance Committees released on Sept. 23 regarding Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings said that CEFC’s chairman at the time, Ye Jianming, had ties to the People’s Liberation Army.

Ye had also been an officer in the 2000s for a group controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, according to the Senate report.

On May 2, 2017, a day after the text message, Hunter Biden arranged a meeting between Bobulinski, James Biden and Joe Biden in Los Angeles.

Bobulinski said at a press conference on Thursday that the meeting lasted an hour. He also said that the meeting undercut Joe Biden’s past claims to have never discussed business with his son.

“That is false,” Bobulinski said of Joe Biden’s previous statements.

“I have firsthand knowledge about this because I directly dealt with the Biden family, including Joe Biden.”

Bobulinski said that during the May 2017 meeting, he and the Bidens discussed “the Biden’s family business plans with the Chinese.”

He said that Joe Biden was “plainly familiar” with those plans “at a high level.”

Text messages preserved by Bobulinski show him discussing the meeting with Hunter and James Biden.

Bobulinski has provided emails, text messages and business records related to the CEFC deal to the Senate Homeland Security Committee. He also met Friday with the FBI, according to Sen. Ron Johnson, who chairs the committee.

The DCNF has also obtained Bobulinski’s trove of records.

WATCH: 

Bobulinski, Hunter Biden, James Biden and two other partners, James Gilliar and Rob Walker, went on to form companies called SinoHawk and Oneida Holdings to partner with CEFC.

Documents from the Bobulinski trove show that Oneida Holdings was formed on May 22, 2017, three weeks after Hunter Biden proposed using a U.S. company to do business with CEFC.

According to Bobulinski, CEFC was expected to fund the partnership with SinoHawk with $10 million in seed money to begin investing in infrastructure and technology companies.

He said Thursday that CEFC never followed through with the investment. Emails and text messages from Bobulinski show him hounding CEFC executives about the delayed wire transfer.

Hunter and James Biden ended up working with CEFC, though Bobulinski said on Thursday that he was unaware of the side deal.

In the Aug. 3, 2017, email, Bobulinski provided a letter responding to a list of questions from CEFC about the joint venture with SinoHawk. One question from CEFC was about a $5 million interest-free loan the company was making to the Biden family.

The next day, without Bobulinski’s knowledge, CEFC made the first in a series of wire transfers to a law firm for Hunter Biden.

According to the Senate report, a subsidiary of CEFC China Energy called CEFC Infrastructure Investment wired $100,000 to Hunter Biden’s law firm, Owasco.

The report also says that the wire payment “was identified for potential criminal financial activity.”

On Aug. 8, 2017, according to the Senate report, the CEFC affiliate wired $5 million to a bank account for a shell company called Hudson West III.

That shell company, which Hunter Biden co-owned with an associate of Ye Jianming, would end up wiring $4,790,375 to Hunter Biden’s law firm through Sept. 25, 2018, according to the report.

Hunter and James Biden also tapped into a $100,000 line of credit linked to Hudson West III and CEFC, the Senate report said.

Bobulinski confronted James Biden about revelations in the Senate report, according to his records.

“You can imagine my shock when reading the report yesterday put out by the Senate committee,” Bobulinski wrote to James Biden on Sept. 24.

“The fact that you and HB were lying to Rob, James and I while accepting $5 million from CeFc is infuriating,” Bobulinksi wrote.

“And so disappointing based on the years of work that James, Rob and team invested to get things done,” he continued, referring to James Gilliar and Rob Walker, the two other SinoHawk partners.

Other documents from the Bobulinski documents raise questions about whether Joe Biden was a passive investor in the CEFC partnership.

A May 13, 2017 email written by Gilliar, the SinoHawk partner, makes reference to a 10% equity stake that Hunter Biden would hold for “the big guy.”

Bobulinski said Thursday that “the big guy” is Joe Biden, and that Hunter Biden often referred to his father by that term.

Joe Biden was never listed on any business records for SinoHawk or Oneida Holdings, though messages from the Bobulinski trove show that the partners discussed keeping Joe Biden’s name hidden during business discussions.

“Don’t mention Joe being involved, it’s only when u are face to face, I know u know that but they are paranoid,” Gilliar told Bobulinski in a text message on May 20, 2017.

“They should be paranoid about things,” Bobulinski replied.

The Biden campaign denied in a statement on Thursday that Joe Biden ever invested in his son’s companies.

“Joe Biden has never even considered being involved in business with his family, nor in any overseas business whatsoever. He has never held stock in any such business arrangements nor has any family member or any other person ever held stock for him,” said Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates in a statement to The Wall Street Journal.

The campaign did not address questions about Biden’s meeting with Bobulinski, according to The Journal.

A lawyer for Hunter Biden did not respond to a request for comment.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel