House probe unveils fresh evidence contradicting Joe Biden claims about family’s foreign deals

The House Oversight and Accountability Committee on Wednesday directly challenged President Joe Biden’s claims about his family’s overseas business deals, providing fresh evidence son Hunter Biden got money directly from China and was involved in a business deal with a Romanian figure accused of corruption.

The information also appears to show the first son helped arrange for one of his foreign business associates to meet with his father’s vice presidential office.

In his second interim report, committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said his panel was increasingly concerned that Hunter Biden and his partners engaged in a pattern of making lucrative business deals with foreign figures suspected of corruption in countries for which his father had official U.S. policy responsibilities.

That pattern was first exposed years ago with a deal with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings that U.S. officials deemed corrupt.

"The committee has uncovered evidence indicative of influence peddling and financial deception warranting further investigation and legislative solutions," Comer’s panel wrote in a 36-page report.

You can read the full report here:

For example, the report provided fresh details on a series of transactions between 2015 and 2017 with a Romanian businessman named Gabriel Popoviciu, whom the committee said was charged and convicted by Romanian prosecutors with a bribery-related offense.

"The money stops flowing from the Romanian national soon after Joe Biden leaves the vice presidency," Comer said during a news conference Wednesday. "This is a pattern of influence peddling."

White House spokesperson Ian Sams responded to the Republican report by stating in a memo that Comer's probe is "clearly an evidence-free, politically-motivated 'investigation."

He also said Comer has a "long pattern of making absurd claims that President Biden has made governing decisions not in the interest of America, but of the Chinese Communist Party, using baseless claims, personal attacks, and innuendo to try to score political points."

The committee report appears to show that payments to companies tied to Hunter Biden began from the Romanian businessman shortly after then-Vice President Joe Biden met with Romania’s president at the White House in September 2015 to discuss "anticorruption efforts and rule of law" a little over a year after Joe Biden made a similar speech in Romania.

"The Committee is further concerned that while Vice President Biden advocated publicly for anti-corruption policies in Romania, bank records show Biden family members and business associates were simultaneously reaping in significant amounts of money from a Romanian individual at the center of a Romanian corruption scandal," the report reads.

The report also states bank records show that within five weeks of Joe Biden's meeting with the Romanian president a company named Bladon Enterprises Limited – Popoviciu’s Cypriot company – began making deposits into a bank account of a company named Robinson Walker LLC, controlled by one of Hunter Biden's associates.

"From November 2015 to May 2017, Bladon Enterprises paid Robinson Walker, LLC over $3 million," the report states. "Biden family accounts received approximately $1.038 million from the Robinson Walker, LLC account after Bladon Enterprises deposits. Sixteen of the seventeen payments from Bladon Enterprises to Robinson Walker, LLC were made while Joe Biden was Vice President."

The committee said it feared the Robinson Walker account was used to disguise hat some of the monies would be routed to the Biden family.

For example, on Nov. 5, 2015, Bladon Enterprises wired $179,836.86 into the Robinson Walker LLC bank account, and a day later a third of the amount was transferred to Hunter Biden, the report states.

The pattern occurred several times, including in early 2017 after Joe Biden had just left office, Comer’s investigation found.

In another example, $84,000 of a $172,000 payment from Bladon to Robinson Walker was routed to Biden family members, including Hunter Biden and Hallie Biden, the widow of Hunter Biden’s older brother, the committee said.

Comer said his team is still investigating whether Hunter Biden tried to influence the U.S. government on behalf of the Romanian businessman.

"The Committee is investigating Hunter Biden and his business associates’ engagement with U.S. government officials on behalf of Popoviciu," the report also reads.

The committee also released bank records it said directly contradicted Joe Biden’s assertion during the 2020 presidential campaign that his son never received money from China.

Biden said in an October 2020 presidential debate: "My son has not made money in terms of this thing about, what are you talking about, China. I have not had – The only guy who made money from China is this guy [Donald Trump]. He’s the only one. Nobody else has made money from China."

The committee report refutes that argument.

"In 2017 alone, bank records show President Biden’s family and their related companies received millions of dollars from Chinese foreign nationals’ companies," the report states.

The report provided a bank receipt for one specific transaction from August 2017 to drive home the report related to Hunter Biden’s dealings with the Chinese energy firm CEFC.

"The bank records establish Owasco P.C., Hunter Biden’s professional corporation, received $100,000 that was funded by Shanghai Huaxin in China," the report noted.

The Chinese dealings also raised concerns for another reason, the committee said: Joe Biden has repeatedly stated he and his office had no business dealings with Hunter Biden’s business clients. While evidence to the contrary has emerged from Ukraine to China, the report Wednesday offered a fresh anecdote involving the Serbian businessman Vuc Jeremic, who was involved in the CEFC deal and also seeking to become the UN General Assembly leader in 2016.

Here is the block of that report laying out the story:

"Evidence indicates Hunter Biden and his associates sought to help Jeremic with this campaign by leveraging their connection with the Office of the Vice President (OVP). In an email dated June 16, 2016 (one day after the third payment above), Jeremic wrote Hunter Biden and Eric Schwerin (a Biden family associate) asking if he could ‘meet with VPOTUS National Security Advisor Colin Kahl’ related to the elections for UN Secretary General. Eric Schwerin wrote to Hunter Biden, 'Think about how you want to respond  ... '

"On July 2, 2016, Jeremic informed Hunter Biden and his business associates in a follow up email, '[m]y meeting with Colin did not last very long, but didn’t go too bad, I think. What is suboptimal is that OVP seems to be outside the decision-making loop on the UNSG elections issue. Colin promised to get better informed on what’s going on at the moment.'

"It appears from the evidence that: (1) a Biden administration official met with Jeremic to discuss the UN Secretary General election at the direction of Hunter Biden and/or his business associates, (2) State Energy HK made $3 million in payments to CIRSD around the timeframe of Jeremic’s campaign, (3) and soon after Vice President Biden left public office in 2017, the same company—State Energy HK—made a $3 million payment to Robinson Walker, LLC—and over $1 million of that amount then went to the Bidens.”

The committee said Jeremic so far has declined to assist the congressional investigation.

"We're pretty confident that the president was very knowledgeable about what his family was doing," Comer said. "We just laid out that 16 of the 17 payments to the Biden's from Romania occurred while Joe Biden was vice president."

He told reporters on Wednesday that bank records show the "Biden family, their associates, and their companies, received over 10 million from foreign nationals and their companies."