No Surprise

Although it hadn't hit the news at the time I published yesterday's post, based on what I surmised there, it should be no surprise that Hallie has been identified as the "never before identified Biden" that Oversight Committee Chairman Comer had been teasing over the course of the week:

The Oversight Committee chairman first revealed on Monday that bank records obtained via subpoena implicate three Bidens, including one that’s “never before been identified” as being involved in the family’s alleged influence-peddling operation.

By yesterday, the "never before identified Biden" had been outed:

President Biden’s daughter-in-law Hallie is the mysterious “new” Biden family member who got paid Chinese cash in 2017, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer revealed exclusively to The Post Thursday.

. . . The records show Hallie Biden received $35,000 over two transfers in 2017 from Biden family associate Rob Walker, who got $3 million on March 1, 2017, from State Energy HK Limited, a firm affiliated with CEFC China Energy.

. . . One transfer to Hallie from Robinson Walker LLC was for $25,000 on March 20, 2017, Comer’s staff wrote in a Thursday morning memo to committee members. Another $10,000 was transferred on Feb. 13 — raising “many questions” according to a committee aide because it came shortly before, rather than after, the $3 million haul.

It's known from the numerous stories on the Hunter-Hallie relationship that Hunter had been giving Hallie financial support in various ways between 2015 and 2019, including having her on the payroll of his company Owasco LLC and owning a house with her, so $45,000 in the first months of 2017 would be nothing unusual, although given Hallie's lifestyle, it would have been a drop in the bucket. Nevertheless, in spite of Hunter's regular support, as I noted yesterday, she stiffed her childrens' private school for their tuition in 2018-19, which suggests to me that whatever Hunter was giving her basically went up her nose.

More interesting is the pattern of payments to Hunter and his uncle Jim Biden that this episode represents. According to the Daily Wire,

John Robinson Walker, a Biden family associate, and his company Robinson Walker, LLC used his business to transfer money from the Chinese State Energy HK Limited, a firm affiliated with CEFC China Energy, to Biden family members, including the Hunter Biden (son), James Biden (brother), Hallie Biden (daughter-in-law), and a fourth “unknown Biden” from 2015 to 2017.

. . . According to the memo, less than two months after then-Vice President Biden left office under the Obama administration in 2017, the Chinese state energy company wired $3 million to Robinson Walker, LLC. However, Walker’s business allegedly only had a balance of $159,000 at the time of the transfer.

Following the wire, the committee memo says Walker’s company transferred on March 1, 2017, $1,065,000 to European Energy and Infrastructure Group (EEIG) in Abu Dhabi, which is affiliated with James Gilliar, a business partner of Hunter Biden that has been previously involved in other foreign transactions dealing with the Biden family. Gilliar’s affiliated company allegedly received roughly the same $1,065,000 on March 2, 2017.

According to the New York Post, Walker is a former Clinton administration official whose wife, Betsy Massey Walker, was an assistant to second lady Jill Biden during Joe Biden’s vice presidency.

At the same link, the Post identified Gilliar, a former British special forces officer with ties to UK intelligence services, as the author of the May 2017 email proposing that the “big guy” get 10% of the CEFC deal.

However, the still-incomplete record shows a business relationship among Hunter, Rob Walker, and James Gilliar that extended at least as far back as 2015, when Joe was still in office as vice president. According to the Post,

“Over the course of several years, members of the Biden family and their companies received over $1.3 million in payments from accounts related to their associate, Rob Walker,” Comer said. “Most of this money came as a result of a wire from a Chinese energy company and went not only to Hunter and James Biden but also to Hallie Biden and an unknown ‘Biden.’”

. . . More than a third of the $3 million that Walker’s firm received was forwarded to Biden family associate James Gilliar and “almost the exact same amount,” $1,065,000, was distributed among Biden family members over three months, the committee memo says.

According to the Daily Wire,

On November 5, 2015, the memo says that Walker’s LLC received nearly $180,000 from an unknown company with an overseas bank account. It adds that Walker transferred $59,900 from the business account to his personal checking account the next day, which went to a bank account for “Robert Biden” three days later.

According to the Post,

The Oversight Committee notes that on Nov. 9, 2015, Robinson Walker LLC wired $59,900 to one of Hunter Biden’s accounts and another $59,900 to Gilliar’s EEIG account.

The committee is unsure what company was responsible for initially wiring these funds, totaling $179,836.86, to Walker’s account.

What we see in both cases is a three-way deal, in which some company wires Robinson Walker a lump sum, which Walker splits into three parts, one to Gilliar, one to Hunter, and one that he keeps for himself. If the 2015 deal is like the 2017 deal, we might infer that Hunter then subdivided his share and sent it along to other Bidens, keeping some for himself. And the best we can surmise is that this is under some sort of understanding that had existed at least between 2015 and 2017, but beyond that, we don't yet know how many transactions occurred, how much money was involved in total, where the money came from, and exactly which Bidens got the money from Hunter, although as Chairman Comer says,

At the end of this I think we’re gonna see there are probably six or seven Biden family members that were involved in various business schemes around the world.

As I've mentioned, I've been maintaining a timeline of noteworthy Hunter Biden events, which at present becomes more dense starting in 2016. However, the new report of a November 2015 transaction that mirrors the larger and better publicized 2017 transaction suggests Hunter had been a busy guy well before the events that have come to light up to now. However, it's worth noting that other Hunter enterprises, including BHR partners and Rosemont Seneca partners, date from as early as 2009 and appear to involve issues like travel with Joe to China when Joe was still vice president, so I strongly suspect there's a great deal more to learn.