A former associate of Hunter Biden told congressional investigators that Joe Biden was not involved with his son’s business dealings, which appears to contradict what he told the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 2020.
Rob Walker, who did business with Hunter Biden for years, told the House Oversight and Accountability Committee on Jan. 26 that Joe Biden “while in office or as a private citizen, was never involved in any business activities we pursued,” according to a transcript of his testimony released Tuesday. This suggestion appears to be at odds with what Walker told the FBI when agents talked to him at his Arkansas home in December 2020, when he responded affirmatively to a question about whether he knew or heard of any instances in which Joe Biden participated in meetings pertaining to his son’s business interests, according to a transcript of the discussion released by the House Ways and Means Committee.
In 2020, Walker said “yeah” in response to an FBI agent’s inquiry as to whether there were “any times when [Joe Biden] was in office or did you hear Hunter say that he was settin’ up a meeting with his dad with [foreign business interests] while dad was still in office.” Unbeknownst to Walker, that 2020 conversation with the FBI was being recorded.
However, this exchange appears to contradict what Walker told congressional investigators on Jan. 26.
“I certainly don’t recall Hunter setting up with a meeting with his dad,” Walker told the House Oversight and Accountability Committee on Jan. 26 when they asked him to explain his answer to the FBI. “No business associates that I would know of did he ever set up any meetings with Hunter or with his father.” (RELATED: ‘Such A Dumb Question’: Biden Dismisses FBI Informant File That Referred To Him As ‘Big Guy’)
Walker Transcript by Nick Pope
“I remember being prompted to speak more, and I didn’t have the opportunity,” Walker told legislators about the 2020 talk with the FBI. Walker then explained that it was not uncommon for Joe Biden to stop by various events and occasions involving family members.
“As far as I know, he had — Hunter had never set up any business associates or any possible entities that we were going to be working with — was he trying to put them together with his father,” Walker testified on Jan. 26.
In both his Jan. 26 testimony and the 2020 talk with the FBI, Walker addressed a 2017 meeting at the Four Seasons in Washington, D.C., including himself, Hunter Biden and numerous businessmen from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-linked energy firm, CEFC China Energy. Walker said that Joe Biden briefly “stopped by” the meeting, but that no business was discussed in his presence.
Not long after that meeting, a company tied to CEFC wired $3 million to Walker’s LLC, which proceeded to shell out approximately $1 million to Hunter Biden and other members of the Biden family, according to his testimony. Walker characterized the timeline as merely coincidental in his Jan. 26 interview with lawmakers.
During the 2020 election cycle and as recently as August 2023, Joe Biden and his spokespeople have routinely asserted that he had never discussed business matters with his son. Hunter Biden said in December 2023 that his father was never “financially involved” in his business affairs. (RELATED: Joe Biden ‘Knew’ Hunter Was On Burisma Board While Pushing For Natural Gas In Ukraine, Former Obama Stenographer Says)
A growing body of circumstantial evidence has emerged over the past several years to suggest that Joe Biden may have been more involved with his son’s business dealings than he has claimed.
Tony Bobulinski, another former business associate of Hunter Biden, expressed a much different view in his opening statement when delivering testimony to the House Oversight and Accountability in Washington on Tuesday.
“The Chinese Communist Party through its surrogate, China Energy Company Limited, or ‘CEFC’ – a CCP-linked Chinese energy conglomerate – successfully sought to infiltrate and compromise Joe Biden and the Obama-Biden White House,” Bobulinski told lawmakers, according to a transcript of his opening statement. “I want to be crystal clear: from my direct personal experience and what I have subsequently come to learn, it is clear to me that Joe Biden was ‘the Brand’ being sold by the Biden family … Joe Biden was more than a participant in and beneficiary of his family’s business; he was an enabler, despite being buffered by a complex scheme to maintain plausible deniability.”
The White House did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
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