Hunter's New Chinese Wire Transfers

One point I keep making here is that it's misleading to focus on the Hunter laptop as any sort of key to the Biden family shakedown. While it covers the period from 2010 to 2019, and it has lots of distractions, it leaves out two key periods, Joe's time in the Senate from 1972 to the start of the laptop timeline in 2010, and much more important, payoffs to Joe after 2019, which begins to cover his time as president. In addition, it's misleading to focus on Hunter, because it looks like Joe's brothers Jim and Frank were in on the hustle as well.

Beyond that, the laptop only hints at one feature of Joe's interregnum between 2017 and 2021, when Joe, out of office, seems to have been treated as the likely next president well before the 2020 election and was accorded courtesies consistent with that expectation, such as informal coordination with the Secret Service, although former vice presidents are not entitled to protection. We know very little about how this worked and who was involved.

And I'm surprised that there's been so little attention to one of yesterday's revelations from the House Republicans:

Hunter Biden received wires that originated in Beijing for more than $250,000 from Chinese business partners during the summer of 2019 — wires that listed the Delaware home of Joe Biden as the beneficiary address for the funds, Fox News Digital has learned from a congressional committee.

Joe announced his candidacy for president on April 25, 2019, just outside the time span of Hunter's laptop. According to the link,

The first wire transfer sent to Hunter Biden, dated July 26, 2019, was for $10,000 from an individual named Ms. Wang Xin. There is a Ms. Wang Xin listed on the website for BHR Partners. It is unclear if the wire came from that Wang Xin.

The second wire transfer sent to Hunter Biden, dated Aug. 2, 2019, was for $250,000 from Li Xiang Sheng — also known as Jonathan Li, the CEO of BHR Partners — and Ms. Tan Ling. The committee is trying to identify Ling’s role.

The beneficiary for the wires is listed as Robert Hunter Biden with the address "1209 Barley Mill Rd." in Wilmington, Delaware. That address is the main residence for President Biden.

While this goes some distance to disprove Joe's claims that his family never received money from China, it also reinforces a relationship with Jonathan Li of BHR partners that had existed well before the July-August 2019 wire transfers. BHR Partners "is a private investment fund founded in 2013 by Bohai Industrial Investment Fund Management Co., Ltd., which is controlled by Bank of China Limited along with a partnership with Hunter Biden." Jonathan Li has a history of contact with both Hunter and Joe. On December 4, 2013, Hunter traveled to China with Joe on Air Force Two, and in the course of the trip, Joe met with Jonathan Li in what was described as a social meeting.

In 2017, Joe wrote college recommendation letters for Jonathan Li's son. In July of that year, Hunter sent Li the notorius WhatsApp message “I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” According to that link,

If the message is in fact real and its contents taken at face value, it would certainly raise political and ethical questions for the White House. Hunter Biden and his uncles, James and Frank, have a lengthy record of invoking the family name to secure business deals without Joe Biden's knowledge, which could have been the case in this circumstance. But if Joe Biden wasn't in office at the time, it would not necessarily amount to evidence of a crime.

The problem for that view now is that the news of the summer 2019 wire transfers provides evidence of a business relationship between Jonathan Li and the Bidens extending over a six-year period from 2013 to at least 2019. This begins while Joe was vice president, extends through the interregnum, and into Joe's presidential campaign as of 2019. It raises additional questions about what the expectations were for Joe during the interregnum, when insiders were apparently confident that Joe would become president in 2021, to the point that they wired the Bidens money in apparent anticipation of potential favors.

A question that's so far unanswered is whether the Bidens were actually involved in any specific business deals or quid-pro-quo favors with Jonathan Li. Two logical questions would be what the deal was for which Hunter was demanding payment in the July 2017 WhatsApp message, and what the deal was for which Li wired Hunter over $250,000 in July-August 2019. It seems perfectly reasonable to believe there were either individual deals or a continuing arrangement, and it would be reasonable for the House Republicans to continue to investigate what these were.

The estimate as of yesterday of the Biden family take:

Oversight Committee now has records revealing that from 2014 to 2019, the Biden family and associates raked in $24 million in foreign payments. $15 million of that to the Bidens. That’s $4 million more than previously announced.

But again, this leaves out the years between 1972, whwn Joe was first elected to the Senate, and 2014, as well as ongoing payments after 20l9, which the news of the wire transfers strongly suggests were taking place. We may reasonably surmise that the payments were for something, but so far, especially outside Ukraine, we know nothing, for instance about any specific favors for which the Chinese actors, at minimum Jonathan Li and Ye Jianming, who gave Hunter a diamond worth as much as $80,000, were paying over this extended period.

There's a great deal more to learn. On the other hand, press coverage of only the wire transfers from yesterday hasn't even reached the point of asking the questions I've asked here.