Hunter Biden’s plea agreement with the Justice Department will close the books on five years worth of federal investigations into his activities, a lawyer for the President’s son said Tuesday.
The lead prosecutor in the case, Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, denied that, saying in a statement that the investigation is ongoing.
Meanwhile, congressional Republicans, GOP presidential candidates and other critics plan to continue their own investigations into Hunter Biden. In fact, key Republican lawmakers said, the plea agreement will spur them to dig even deeper into claims of his allegedly corrupt business dealings in Ukraine, China and Romania and efforts to illegally profit off of the politically influential Biden name.
Biden, 53, and his family members have repeatedly denied wrongdoing in their overseas business ventures.
House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said the Department of Justice’s charges “reveal a two-tiered system of justice.” In all, the President’s son is charged with two violations of failure to pay income tax and one violation of unlawful possession of a firearm by a person prohibited.
“Hunter Biden is getting away with a slap on the wrist when growing evidence uncovered by the House Oversight Committee reveals the Bidens engaged in a pattern of corruption, influence peddling, and possibly bribery,” Comer said in a statement. “These charges against Hunter Biden and sweetheart plea deal have no impact on the Oversight Committee’s investigation. We will not rest until the full extent of President Biden’s involvement in the family’s schemes are revealed.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), said Republican senators “have uncovered extensive government and bank records indicative of money laundering as well as foreign business schemes that, in any other circumstance, would raise serious criminal and counterintelligence concerns” since the FBI began its investigation into Hunter Biden nearly five years ago.
“Today’s plea deal cannot be the final word given the significant body of evidence that the FBI and Justice Department have at their disposal,” said Grassley, who is on numerous Senate oversight committees. “It certainly won’t be for me.”
Here’s a summary of some of those investigations into the oldest surviving child of the president that are likely to continue, at least in Congress, well into the future.
Alleged millions in payments and Burisma Holdings in Ukraine
Hunter Biden, a lawyer and former lobbyist, joined the board of Burisma Holdings, the largest gas company in Ukraine, in 2014. That was around the time his father, then the vice president, was helping conduct the Obama administration’s foreign policy in the region. For years, Republicans have insisted that the younger Biden was exploiting his father’s name for financial gain, and have raised unsubstantiated charges of related corruption involving other members of Biden family.
The Justice Department investigation became public in December 2020, one month after the presidential election, when Hunter Biden confirmed that the Justice Department was looking into his tax affairs. The Associated Press subsequently reported that the subpoena focused on DOJ’s scrutiny of Hunter Biden’s taxes, and that it sought information about his business dealings with numerous entities, including Burisma.
The younger Biden denied any wrongdoing, saying in a statement that he was “confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisors.”
More:Hunter Biden’s taxes under investigation by US attorney’s office in Delaware
Senate Republicans also investigated and found no wrongdoing by the Bidens, but claims to the contrary continued to circulate on social media for years. So did unfounded allegations that then-Vice President Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion from Ukraine “to save his son’s job,” promoted by Secure America Now, which calls itself a politically conservative nonprofit group that focuses on United States foreign policy issues.
As vice president, Joe Biden did leverage $1 billion in aid to Ukraine, according to a USA TODAY fact check story on the issue. But he didn’t do it to help Hunter Biden by persuading Ukraine to oust its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, in March 2016 because he was investigating Burisma, as some Republicans had claimed. He did it because Shokin wasn’t pursuing corruption among the country’s politicians.
In a 2016 email, George Kent, the former acting deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, described the presence of Hunter Biden on the Burisma board as “very awkward for all U.S. officials pushing an anticorruption agenda in Ukraine.”
But such anti-corruption efforts were “a big part of our diplomacy” with Ukraine, since “it was that corruption that allowed Russia to manipulate the country politically and economically,” according to Charles Kupchan, who was a special assistant to President Barack Obama and a senior director for European Affairs on the National Security Council, said
Ironically, the investigation into Burisma led to the first impeachment of then-President Donald Trump in 2019. The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives voted for impeachment after learning that Trump had pressured Ukraine’s president to announce it was investigating the Bidens. Trump was acquitted by the Senate.
In June, Comer’s committee accused President Biden himself of being involved in a $5 million bribery scheme.
The claim came after Republican members of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee reviewed an FBI investigative document that they say contains information from a confidential source about the alleged scheme.
The top Democrat on the panel, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, said the allegations were debunked during a 2020 review by the Justice Department during the Trump administration.
And Biden himself called the claim “a bunch of malarkey.”
House Republicans said they would continue investigating possible influence peddling based on payments from foreigners in Romania and China to nine of Biden’s relatives and their business associates, but without evidence of direct payments to Biden or changes in national policy.
More:Daily Briefing: The story behind the story about Hunter Biden’s laptop
A 2.8-carat diamond and CEFC China Energy
The Justice Department reportedly also looked into Hunter Biden’s business dealings in China, including efforts to win U.S. energy contracts from the Chinese firm CEFC China Energy after his father left the vice presidency in 2017, according to documents released by Republicans on two Senate committees.
At least one of the matters that federal criminal investigators examined was a gift of a 2.8-carat diamond that Hunter Biden received from CEFC’s founder and former chairman Ye Jianming in 2017 after a Miami business meeting, according to a CNN report in December 2020 that cited “one person briefed on the matter.” The massive oil and gas conglomerate has close ties to the Chinese government.
The Washington Post published the results of its own investigation in March 2022, saying it confirmed many of the key details of the Senate report and found additional documents showing Biden family interactions with Chinese executives.
In a 2019 New Yorker profile, Hunter Biden acknowledged receiving the diamond from Ye and said it made him so uncomfortable that he gave it to other associates. “I knew it wasn’t a good idea to take it,” he told the New Yorker. “I just felt like it was weird.” The deal was never consummated, the younger Biden told the magazine, but Chinese authorities later detained Ye amid Chinese news reports of corruption allegations against him.
Hunter Biden also acted as a lawyer briefly for Patrick Ho, the head of an organization backed by CEFC, who was convicted in 2018 of paying millions of dollars in bribes to officials in two African nations to benefit CEFC energy projects in those countries, CNN reported.
Sources told CNN in 2020 that federal investigators were looking into whether Hunter Biden failed to report some of his overseas income for tax purposes.
“Investigators have been examining multiple financial issues, including whether Hunter Biden and his associates violated tax and money laundering laws in business dealings in foreign countries, principally China,” CNN reported, citing two people briefed on the probe. Some of those transactions “involved people who the FBI believe sparked counterintelligence concerns,” a common issue when dealing with Chinese business, CNN reported, citing another source.
Indications of that federal probe emerged after Rudy Giuliani, then President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, helped plant news stories in conservative media that focused on a laptop purportedly belonging to Hunter Biden that was said to include business documents and personal material.
The FBI took possession of the laptop in late 2019, according to a computer repairman in Delaware who showed reporters a copy of a subpoena. The subpoena is real, people briefed on the matter have said, but the FBI and Delaware prosecutors refused to confirm the existence of an investigation.
This past March, House Republicans announced that President Biden’s relatives received a combined $1.3 million from a business associate with links to China.
Hunter Biden, the president’s son; James Biden, the president’s brother; Hallie Biden, the president’s daughter-in-law; and a fourth unnamed Biden received the payments from business associate Rob Walker, according to Comer’s House Oversight and Accountability Committee. The money was paid out after Walker received a $3 million wire transfer from a Chinese company, according to the panel.
“It is unclear what services were provided to obtain this exorbitant amount of money,” Comer said at the time.
The White House, as it has in the past, denied wrongdoing and called Comer’s inquiries a hyper-partisan fishing expedition.
House-led GOP investigations into Hunter Biden
Republican lawmakers who control the House also have continued to scrutinize Hunter Biden’s financial dealings and overseas deals, as well as any potential involvement by other members of the Biden family in them.
And the GOP is looking into the Justice Department’s investigation into the younger Biden, to see whether it’s probe was aggressive enough.
The House Republicans, for instance, claim that a whistleblower who formerly worked for the FBI told them that the Justice Department wouldn’t allow agents to be more aggressive in their investigation of Hunter Biden.
The Republicans threatened to hold FBI Director Christopher Wray in contempt of Congress for not letting them review one document in which an alleged whistleblower purportedly claims that Joe Biden accepted millions of dollars in payments to his family in exchange for favorable policy actions.
Earlier this month, the FBI brought the document with “limited redactions” to Capitol Hill for review by the chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., and the top Democrat on the panel, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland. But Comer said anything short of providing the document to the committee was unacceptable.
“Given the severity and complexity of the allegations contained within this record, Congress must investigate further,” Comer said.
In response, Democrats have accused Republicans of trying to gin up politically motivated claims to hurt President Biden in the run-up to the 2024 election.
The whistleblower claims cited by Republican lawmakers reportedly have not been corroborated by investigators, CNN has reported. The White House has dismissed the dispute as “a fact-free stunt” and the FBI called a contempt vote “unwarranted.”
Contributing: Bart Jansen
