WASHINGTON — Hunter Biden caved Friday and agreed to sit for a deposition in the House impeachment inquiry into his father — moving to avert a vote to hold him in contempt of Congress.
Hunter, 53, waved a white flag in a letter to Congress from his attorney Abbe Lowell.
“If you issue a new proper subpoena, now that there is a duly authorized impeachment inquiry, Mr. Biden will comply for a hearing or deposition. We will accept such a subpoena on Mr. Biden’s behalf,” Lowell wrote.
The House Judiciary and Oversight committees on Wednesday voted to hold Hunter in contempt — after the first son crashed the Oversight hearing, infuriating Republicans after he skipped a scheduled Dec. 13 deposition.
A Hunter Biden business partner convicted of swindling a poor Native American tribe out of tens of millions of dollars hasn’t paid a cent back to his victims as ordered by a New York judge, according to court filings.
Manhattan federal prosecutors wrote Wednesday that more than a month has passed since fraudster Devon Archer received a demand for payment of the debt – and he now owes his victims a total of $43,954,416.75.
“As of April 5, 2023, Archer has paid nothing toward the judgment and the outstanding restitution balance,” Assistant US Attorney Melissa Childs wrote in the so-called writ of garnishment.
Prosecutors are now seeking to seize property controlled by Archer from a trust company and a life insurance company in order to begin repaying his victims, according to the court filing.
US District Judge Ronnie Abrams will have to approve the prosecutors’ request to begin that process. An attorney for Archer did not immediately respond to request for comment.
Abrams sentenced Archer to more than a year in prison in February 2022 after his conviction on conspiracy to commit securities fraud and securities fraud charges for his role in the scheme to defraud the Oglala Sioux.
Archer has been allowed to remain free while he appeals his conviction and sentence.
Archer and his co-defendants issued a community corporation controlled by the Native American tribe some $60 million in bonds. Instead of returning a promised annuity, they used the cash to build a “financial services mega company,” prosecutors charged.
“Archer became a key player in the scheme, anticipating that, when the scheme succeeded, he would helm the resulting conglomerate and, ultimately, reap massive profits from its sale,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing submission for Archer.
Before he was busted by the feds, Archer had a close relationship with Hunter Biden and helped land the president’s son a seat on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company. Biden was not involved in the Native American fraud scheme.
Archer also accepted a board seat at Burisma, a job highlighted by his attorney in a court filing prior to his sentencing in the bond case.
“As has been reportedly endlessly, he joined the board of directors of Burisma Holdings in Kiev [sic], Ukraine,” his attorney wrote.
“What the news reports fail to mention is that Mr. Archer provided real value to Burisma, and he was responsible for helping to found and develop the Burisma Holdings subsidiaries Burisma Kazakhstan and Burisma Geothermal,” they added.
House Republicans are pushing President Joe Biden to investigate the Chinese Communist Party’s ties to the collapsed Silicon Valley Bank – and demanding that he reveal any Biden family connections with Chinese companies set to benefit from the federal government’s bailout.
Silicon Valley Bank and a Shanghai-based subsidiary “played an indispensable role in financing China’s innovation economy,” Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Georgia) wrote to Biden Friday in a letter signed by 19 of his GOP colleagues, Fox News reported.
The letter listed four Chinese tech and pharmaceutical companies with deposits at SVB totaling $289 million — assets that have been protected by the Biden administration’s intervention.
“The Department of the Treasury, Federal Reserve, and FDIC cannot afford to be asleep at the wheel while the CCP finances its companies with the support of U.S. venture capitalists at the expense of American taxpayers,” the lawmakers wrote.
The Republicans also pointed to “recent revelations that members of the Biden family have received payments from Chinese companies” — calling it “a matter of vital national interest” to find out “what influence they may have on Executive Branch policymaking.”
The Post reported last week that $1,065,000 from a Chinese energy company was doled out to Biden family members — including first son Hunter Biden and his sister-in-law-turned-former lover Hallie Biden — over three months in 2017.
“The American people deserve to know whether their government is bailing out companies connected to the Chinese Communist Party,” McCormick told Fox News.
“Joe Biden should answer whether his family has received large payments from companies in China, and whether his judgment was influenced as a result.”
WASHINGTON — The House oversight committee’s Republican majority plans to press hard for evidence of “collusion” between the FBI and Twitter to censor The Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story when three former executives of the social media company appear at the Capitol Wednesday morning.
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) laid out the goal in the prepared version of his opening remarks, excerpts of which were released ahead of the 10 a.m. hearing.
“Twitter, under the leadership of our witnesses today, was a private company the federal government used to accomplish what it constitutionally cannot: limit the free exercise of speech,” Comer will say.
“We owe it to the American people to provide answers about this collusion to censor information about Joe Biden’s involvement in his family’s business schemes.”
Comer is holding the hearing as one of his first acts since taking power last month as other committees prepare for related investigations of possible FBI and intelligence-community misconduct.
Although little is yet known about the FBI’s direct role in the laptop story’s censorship by platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, Comer will lay out what information has already been made available, some of which was released by new Twitter owner Elon Musk.
“In the months leading up to the laptop story, the FBI advised senior Twitter executives to question the validity of any Hunter Biden story. We also know that one of the witnesses before us today participated in an Aspen Institute exercise in September 2020 on a potential ‘hack and dump’ operation relating to Hunter Biden,” Comer’s prepared remarks say.
“Other Big Tech companies and reporters attended as well. This exercise prepared them for their future collusion to suppress and delegitimize information contained in Hunter Biden’s laptop about the Biden family’s business schemes.”
Comer will add, “On October 14, 2020, the New York Post published its first story based on information contained in Hunter Biden’s laptop … Immediately following the story’s publication, America witnessed a coordinated campaign by social media companies, mainstream news, and the intelligence community to suppress and delegitimize the existence of Hunter Biden’s laptop and its contents.”
Democrats are expected to play defense at the hearing.
White House spokesman Ian Sams tweeted last week that the hearing was “a political stunt.” Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) said in a recent prebuttal, “If you’re so interested in what was on Hunter Biden’s laptop, you should do that in your private time, not on the taxpayer’s dime.”
But Republicans are expected to pressure the former executives on breadcrumbs left by Musk’s so-called “Twitter Files” disclosures after he took over the platform in October.
The FBI paid Twitter $3.5 million from October 2019 to February 2021 to process its moderation requests, according to a document released by Musk.
San Francisco-based FBI agent Elvis Chan used a special transmission platform called Teleporter to send Roth and at least one other person 10 documents on the night of Oct. 13, 2020, just hours before The Post’s initial laptop stories were published at 5 a.m. on Oct. 14, according to Musk-released evidence.
In July 2020 — three months before The Post broke the laptop story — Chan emailed Roth suggesting that beginning 30 days before Election Day, Twitter executives would be granted temporary security clearances to discuss threats with FBI officials, according to Musk’s disclosures.
The laptop revelations attracted questions about possible corruption and conflicts of interest in foreign affairs.
The Post’s first laptop article revealed that Vadym Pozharskyi, an executive at the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, emailed Hunter in 2015 to thank him for the “opportunity to meet your father” — contradicting Biden’s September 2019 claim that he’d “never spoken” with his son about “his overseas business dealings” and his August 2019 claim that “I have never discussed, with my son or my brother or with anyone else, anything having to do with their businesses.”
Hunter earned up to $1 million per year to serve on the Burisma board from 2014 to 2019, beginning when his father was put in charge of the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy.
A second October 2020 bombshell from The Post described Joe Biden’s alleged role in Hunter Biden and his uncle Jim Biden’s business venture with the company CEFC China Energy, which was reputed to be part of Beijing’s “Belt and Road” foreign influence campaign.
A May 13, 2017, email from the laptop said the “big guy” would get 10% of the deal. Former Hunter Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski alleges that he discussed the CEFC partnership with Joe Biden in May 2017 and both Bobulinski and another former Hunter Biden partner, James Gilliar, identified Joe Biden as the “big guy.”
Hunter and James Biden earned $4.8 million from CEFC China Energy in 2017 and 2018, according to the Washington Post’s later review of Hunter Biden laptop documents and an October 2017 email identifies Joe Biden as a participant in a call about CEFC’s attempt to purchase US natural gas.
When they hear James Comer speak with his lilting south-central Kentucky accent and courteous style, it would be an easy mistake for Democrats and targets of his newly fanged House Oversight committee to underestimate the former Monroe County cattle farmer.
But Comer is a killer — and corruption is his prey.
Everything has changed in Washington since the Republicans won back the House, and Comer, as chairman of the Oversight Committee, is champing at the bit to hold the Biden administration accountable. That includes getting to the bottom of the Biden family corruption as revealed in Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, and elsewhere, using the awesome power of Congress.
“This is not about Hunter Biden,” Comer said last week in a broad-ranging interview with The Post. “It’s about Joe Biden.” He aims to “prove Joe benefitted financially and prove he made decisions against the best interests of the United States.”
Biden probers get busy
Comer is increasingly confident of his case, as whistleblowers come forward to the committee’s investigators from all aspects of the Biden family enterprises, and financial institutions. He says his investigators are examining the hitherto unexplored activities of Joe Biden’s brothers, Jim and Frank — and have witnesses willing to talk.
His initial focus has been to follow the money trail to see how it connects to the Chinese Communist Party. For that purpose, the committee will subpoena 13 banks, the majority of which have been fully cooperative.
Hunter’s high-priced lawyers have been sending letters to the banks warning them not to hand over information to Congress, which Comer says is “bulls–t. They don’t set the rules, Congress sets the rules.”
Hunter’s lawyers also have sent warning letters to Hunter’s former business partners, which Comer describes as “intimidating witnesses.”
He also promises that, unlike previously when Republicans controlled the House, he will crack down savagely on anyone who lies to Congress.
This Wednesday, his committee will begin probing Twitter’s censorship of The Post’s original laptop stories in October 2020, which was part of an apparent coverup by the FBI and Big Tech to protect Joe Biden before the election.
Appearing under oath is James Baker, Twitter’s former deputy general counsel who played an instrumental role in censoring The Post’s account, and who previously was the top lawyer at the FBI, where he was a lead protagonist in the Russiagate plot against President Trump. Baker was parachuted into Twitter just five months before the 2020 election and his role appeared to be as gatekeeper to block information that might be detrimental to Biden.
Also appearing Wednesday is Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of “safety and integrity” a k a chief censor. Roth previously revealed in a sworn declaration that the FBI warned them before the 2020 election to expect a dump of “hacked” material by “state actors”, likely in October, relating to Hunter Biden. This pre-bunking of The Post’s scoop caused Twitter to censor the story.
The third witness to testify is Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s former chief legal officer, who played a key role in censoring The Post and was fired from her $17 million job shortly after Elon Musk took over last October.
Among the questions Republicans on the committee will want to ask is: Who orchestrated Baker’s hiring by Twitter? Did he communicate with anyone associated with the Biden campaign or at the FBI before the election?
Did he know about Hunter’s laptop before The Post’s story was published?
What was the message the FBI sent to Twitter via their Teleporter channel the night before The Post published?
Baker is a past master of deceit, so getting straight answers will be tricky given the format, but similar questions to Roth and Gadde should bear fruit for the systematic evidence bank Comer is building.
Huddle with Chief Twit
Comer met with Musk for more than an hour in Washington recently and was assured of his full support. The Democrats’ Jan. 6 committee has set precedents that Comer will follow. Filming depositions is a crucial part of the armory, something not done before the Jan. 6 investigation but which proved to be remarkably effective in setting the narrative for the public.
Instead of politicians jostling at hearings to make their mark in limited time with their own questions, seasoned interrogators conducting the depositions will draw out a fuller account from witnesses over several hours.
Comer may remind you a little of Columbo, the mild-mannered TV detective whose deceptive geniality lulled suspects into giving the game away.
He is not scruffy like Lieutenant Columbo, but he has the same ruthless focus, disguised by a rural Kentucky congeniality.
While the media tries to paint Comer and his fellow Republicans as clowns, the traps are set and the truth undoubtedly will follow.
The tell-all Pentagon wants shelved
Kash Patel has written a terrific book, “Government Gangsters,” giving an insider’s account of the deep state sabotage of Donald Trump’s presidency, from his vantage point as an adviser to the president and Russiagate investigator for the House Intelligence Committee.
But a book as incendiary as this is not going to have an easy time getting into the hands of the public. And so it is that Patel’s completed manuscript has been languishing at the Department of Defense for more than three months, ostensibly undergoing prepublication “review.”
Patel says his book does not contain classified information — but it sure does send a rocket up the Department of Defense.
He takes direct aim at what he calls the Defense Industrial Complex and the “incestuous relationship between senior military leadership within the DoD and the key officers in charge of multibillion-dollar procurement programs on the one hand and the behemoth defense contractors on the other . . .
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“We pay billions for products we don’t need for wars we don’t need to be in. Then, when the generals and officers who pushed for and elongated those wars get out of the military, they are rewarded with a big fat paycheck by the very companies making all those high-priced goods for the DoD.”
Patel sees the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle as the inevitable result of a corrupt military leadership, and he blames Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for the “unprecedented politicization of the military”.
Surely the DoD is not so frightened of a little robust criticism that they are burying Patel’s book.
Prince is just dirty Harry in sexposé
So much for the older woman who rode Prince Harry like a stallion while taking his virginity, as he recounted in lascivious detail in his book, “Spare.” Turns out she’s only two years older than Harry — and one year younger than his wife, Meghan Markle.
Sasha Walpole, now a 40-year-old mother of two who drives a digger for a living, has been outed as the mystery Brit the world’s press has been searching for since Harry blabbed about their teenage tryst.
She kept her mouth shut for 21 years when she could have made thousands of dollars selling her story to the media. In the end it was Harry who cashed in on her privacy, scoring a reported $20 million to spice up his crybaby memoir.
“I don’t understand why he went into such detail,” Walpole told a reporter who tracked her down last week. “He could have said he lost his virginity and left it at that . . . I would never have spoken out if Harry hadn’t. I’m not that sort of person . . . He has brought it to my door by writing about it.”
It’s Harry’s lowest act so far. No one should ever take him seriously when he whines about his own privacy.
The public parkland just across the street from the White House’s South Lawn was closed to visitors Saturday morning to keep prying eyes away from the private wedding of President Biden’s granddaughter Naomi.
The Ellipse, the green space between the president’s home and the Washington Monument was barred off with temporary fencing that kept the curious at least a block away from the 11:00 am ceremony.
Guests — including former Senator Chris Dodd and former President Trump’s onetime personal lawyer Michael Cohen’s daughter Samantha, who attended college with Naomi Biden — were handed hand warmers as they filed through the White House gates, the Daily Mail reported.
But journalists have been banned from covering any part of the outdoor wedding ceremony, the bridal lunch to follow, or the “dessert-and-dancing” reception Saturday evening — even though all of the nuptial events are taking place in what the Bidens have frequently called “The People’s House.”
“Naomi and Peter [Neal] have asked that their wedding be closed to the media and we are respecting their wishes,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Friday.
In the White House’s history, only 18 weddings have been celebrated at the president’s home — just five in the past 100 years, according to the White House Historical Association.
Naomi Biden and her soon-to-be husband, both attorneys, have lived at the White House since August, CNN reported Friday.
The Biden family used a presidential motorcade Friday evening to make the 700-foot, half-block trip from the White House to the Renwick Gallery art museum, where the bridal couple hosted a rehearsal dinner.
A $5 million interest-free loan the Biden family received from a Chinese energy conglomerate in 2017 should have been probed by the FBI as part of a possible “pay-to-play” plan, Sen. Chuck Grassley told top law enforcement officials last week.
In an Oct. 13 letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Delaware US Attorney David Weiss, Grassley (R-Iowa) questioned whether the bureau is fully investigating corruption allegations against first son Hunter Biden and demanded a “full and unredacted FBI summary” of Hunter business partner Tony Bobulinski’s October 2020 FBI interview.
According to Grassley, Bobulinski told investigators that Hunter and first brother James Biden were contracted to assist CEFC China Energy “with potential business deals and investments while Joe Biden was Vice President; however, that work remained intentionally uncompensated while Joe Biden was Vice President.
“After Joe Biden left the Vice Presidency, the summary makes clear that Hunter Biden and James Biden worked with CEFC and affiliated individuals to compensate them for that past work and the benefits they procured for CEFC,” Grassley went on. “According to the summary, Hunter Biden, James Biden and their business associates created a joint venture that would serve as a vehicle to accomplish that financial compensation, and that arrangement was made sometime after a meeting in Miami between Hunter Biden and CEFC officials in February 2017.”
In a July 26, 2017 email to Bobulinski — first revealed by The Post in October 2020 — CEFC executive Zhao Runlong wrote that the company “fully support the framework of establishing the [joint venture], based on their trust on BD [Biden] family.”
Zhao added that “5 million is lent to BD family in the 10 million charter capital … This 5 million loan to BD family is interest-free. But if the 5M is used up, should CEFC keep lending more to the family? If CEFC lends more, they need to know the interest rate for the subsequent loan(s).”
The $5 million was originally meant to be sent through the joint venture, dubbed SinoHawk and co-owned by Oneida, a holding company made up of five LLCs, two of which were controlled by Hunter and James Biden.
However, Grassley said, the money had not been sent at the time of Zhao’s email to Bobulinski, and “James Biden considered calling CEFC officials and threatening to withdraw Biden family support from future deals.”
The following month, in August 2017, $5 million was wired from “a company connected to CEFC” to Hudson West III, a company jointly owned at the time by Hunter Biden’s law firm Owasco and Coldharbour Capital LLC, which Grassley and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) tied to another CEFC executive, Gongwen Dong, in a September 2020 report.
The money, Grassley wrote last week, was later transferred to Owasco and James Biden’s own consulting company, the Lion Hall Group.
The first family’s arrangements with CEFC are among the most scrutinized of Hunter Biden’s overseas business interests after a May 13, 2017 email — also revealed by The Post in 2020 — showed that Bobulinski, Hunter Biden, and two other business partners planned split equity in a planned business venture with the company four ways.
According to the email, each of the foursome would get 20% of the shares in the new company, with 10% going to James Biden and the remaining 10% “held by H for the big guy?” – a phrase Bobulinski and another partner, James Gilliar, used to refer to Joe Biden.
The president has repeatedly denied ever discussing Hunter’s overseas business arrangements with his offspring, a stance that has come under scrutiny due to evidence gathered from the first son’s abandoned laptop.
“The Justice Department and FBI must come clean to Congress and the American people with respect to the steps they have taken, or failed to take, relating to the Hunter Biden investigation,” Grassley wrote.
The letter was sent one week after the Washington Post reported that investigators believe they have enough evidence to indict Hunter Biden on tax crime charges, as well as making a false statement about his drug use on a federal gun purchase form.
Hunter Biden allegedly begged one of Maryland’s “most wanted” bad guys to mail him crack cocaine at a luxury hotel.
The ask was apparently made in a suspicious text exchange found on Hunter Biden’s abandoned hard drive. The messages show the first son communicating with someone over several months in 2018, asking for something to be mailed to him under an assumed name he was using, “Joseph Smith,” as in the founder of the Mormon church.
While Biden never specified in the messages what he was asking for, The Sun reported the person on the other end of the texts was Voshawn Sample, a 47-year-old panhandler wanted for a September 2021 armed robbery and assault at a liquor store in Glen Burnie, Md.
Cops say Sample shot an employee of Champion Liquors before taking $10,000, Fox 5 Baltimore reported. Sample was described as “armed, dangerous and unpredictable” when his case aired on Maryland’s Most Wanted last year.
Sample is currently incarcerated and is expected to go on trial in November, according to The Sun.
Hunter texted with the phone number attributed to Sample from May to August 2018, records on the laptop show. A person who answered the number told The Post Saturday it no longer belongs to Sample.
The texts show Hunter Biden appeared to use Sample to score drugs — but that he was also often stood up.
“Man same thing. I really can’t believe you did that to me 3 times. I’m finished man. I thought you were the last honest man in the life,” the first son said in a June 12, 2018 text.
“I’m gonna be honest with you my mother has been on vacation and I couldn’t cook nothing up in my house because my mother has been acting crazy lately,” Sample allegedly replied. “When you come home please come to my house and I don’t want you to bring a dollar with you buddy.”
“I still have that for you I promise. Is you gonna come get what’s yours,” the person asked Biden.
Hunter responded by saying “FEDEX or overnight Mail at Post Office to Guest Joseph Smith (HB). 8221 Sunset Boulevard Los Angeles, California. Chateau Marmont Hotel.”
The drugs never arrived, which left Hunter annoyed.
“So you never sent anything like you said you would … why am I talking to you,” he texted. Later texts show the person begging Hunter Biden for cash to pay legal fees, with the first son responding that he would send $800 bucks.
Reps for Hunter Biden did not respond to request for comment from The Post.
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