Hunter Biden’s extended access to father’s home where classified memos found alarms investigators

From online purchase orders to official government documents, Hunter Biden routinely listed the Delaware home that his father owned — the same one that housed recently unearthed classified documents — as his official residence during a turbulent time in 2018-19 when the president's son suffered through addiction and pursued a controversial Chinese energy deal.

Hunter Biden's connection to the Wilmington, Del., home where three separate tranches of classified documents were found starting on Dec. 20 is already raising concerns among congressional investigators like House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer.

Congressional investigators are acutely aware that some of the players Hunter Biden was seeking business from had connections to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that one business associate tied to the CEFC energy firm in China — Patrick Ho — was convicted of making foreign bribery payments in a case that federal prosecutors alleged also involved efforts to help Iran evade nuclear sanctions.

According to multiple reports, at least one classified document found in Joe Biden's Penn Biden Center office in Washington involved Iran and another dealt with Ukraine, a country where Hunter Biden enjoyed a lucrative business arrangement with Burisma Holdings energy company.

"The Committee is concerned President Biden stored classified documents at the same location his son resided while engaging in international business deals with adversaries of the United States," Comer wrote in a Jan. 13 letter demanding more information from the White House. 

The White House has steadfastly refused to comment on the classified documents scandal since Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Special Counsel Robert Hur to investigate the discoveries of classified material on Nov. 2 at the office Joe Biden used at the Penn Biden Center in Washington and in December and this month at the Biden residence in Wilmington.

The president himself downplayed the controversy on Thursday, predicting there would be "no there there." 

Records found on a laptop the FBI seized in 2019 — including receipts for online orders and hotel reservations with billing information, in addition to banking and legal correspondence — show that Hunter Biden listed his father's Delaware residence as his home address.

For instance, a receipt from 2018 shows a hotel reservation at The Ritz-Carlton Georgetown, Washington, D.C., billed to the Delaware address, and a 2018 Wells Fargo email has updated banking information for the same address. Receipts from Apple in 2019 have the Delaware address listed as the billing address.

In a legal document regarding Hunter and his ex-wife, his residential address is listed as the same Delaware address. Hunter's driver's license issued in 2018 —  a time when he was struggling with drug addiction — again lists his father's Delaware address. 

In his memoir, Hunter wrote that he had quarantined with his family at the Delaware home on Election Day in 2020. 

Kash Patel, a former National Security Council Senior Director, told the John Solomon Reports podcast Thursday that the national security implications of Hunter staying at his father's house while the classified documents were there are cause for concern.

"[I]f these documents talk about China, Ukraine, Russia, and Iran, that's some of our most sensitive intelligence collection reporting," Patel said. "And then you have to ask the question, 'Why were those documents taken? Did Vice President Biden take them to, you know, ensure the deals that his son had with the CCP and affiliated companies were going through so that he would get paid? Did he take them to prevent his son from ever being prosecuted with stuff related to Ukraine? And most importantly, do these enemies of ours now have leverage over our sitting commander in chief?' That's the one that, you know, for me is the most important."

If reports are accurate that one of the classified documents was an Iranian intelligence report, then "it's one of the most damning indictments of recklessness by a commander in chief in modern history," Patel said.

"I mean, we're talking about Iran," he stressed. "It's the world's largest state sponsor of terror. Their [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] is responsible for more civilian casualties to American service members than any one group on planet Earth in history. And our sitting commander in chief, when he was vice president, decided to take extremely sensitive intelligence, classified documentation because his son was involved in dealings with these guys and the CCP?

"It doesn't add up ... it really just doesn't make sense as to why anyone would take this documentation except to cover something up, which is extremely problematic."