America's Talking - Comer: Bank Investigator Flagged Questionable Payments to Hunter Biden

Episode Date: December 1, 2023

House Oversight Committee Chair Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., has released email communication showing that a bank investigator raised concerns about Hunter Biden's overseas deals with a China-linked company. Comer's office said one of his several subpoenas to Biden family members and associates uncovered an email where a bank investigator raised concerns about "$5 million funding from Northern International Capital Holdings, a CEFC affiliated entity linked to the Chinese government, and the subsequent erratic payments to Hudson West III, Hunter Biden's joint venture with a Chinese national, and Owasco, P.C, an entity owned by Hunter Biden." Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, Vice President of News and Content at the Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire service. Joining me again today is the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief Casey, Casey, how are you? Do you good, Dan. How are you? I am doing well, thank you. We are recording this on Friday, December 1st.

Casey, new evidence was released this week in the U.S. House investigation into Biden family business dealings with the House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer releasing email communication showing that a bank investigator raised concerns about 100 Biden's overseas deals with a China-linked company. You wrote about it at the Center Square.com. Tell us more. Yeah, that's right. So this investigation is just a steady drip of evidence that has been really interesting and probably a nightmare for the White House. So, James Comer, who leaves the House Oversight Committee, he sent out all these subpoenas.

And, you know, he's starting to get some information back on those. One of those is the email that you referenced. And I saw a copy of the email. It's very interesting. Basically, a bank investigator whose name is redacted in the email, but they did an analysis. I believe of, you know, some of the banks, more questionable accounts and maybe some other things as well. But they definitely flagged these Biden family deals.

and money that was being shuffled around as questionable and actually recommended that the bank not do business with the Biden family because it was so suspicious. And so in particular, there was a $5 million funding from a company called Northern International Capital Holdings, which is connected to this, basically to the Chinese Communist Party through an energy company. And there's like all these payments moving around to Hudson West, who's 100,000. Biden, you know, contacted Chinese national he was working with, as well as a company owned by Hunter Biden. And so, you know, just your average every day bank investigator said, hey, this is

very suspicious. It was Chinese national Hunter Biden. We know that China tries to take advantage of the children of, you know, very prominent, powerful Americans as a way to gain leverage over them. And I'd actually, he recommended that they not do business because how questionable this was. Now, of course, this is coming after. We know, Dan, we've seen copies of two checks that went to President Joe Biden himself, totaling $240,000. That's been a big question mark in this whole investigation is, okay, yes, Hunter Biden was maybe a little shady. It's probably not hard to believe, but was the president himself directly involved, and did he benefit? Now, the first step in evidence in that was that the president himself, according to witnesses,

was on some phone calls with Hunter Biden and his clients, which maybe helped Hunter Lentz of clients. It's like, okay, that does seem like some involvement. But now we have these checks, which seem to suggest, and Comer himself alleges that the president received hundreds of thousands of dollars of payments through this scheme, one of those payments being this $5 million from this Chinese linked company that then filter down to a check to the president himself. Quoting directly from your story here, Casey, a copy of the email published online appears to show that the bank investigator was concerned about China's habit of targeting, quote, the children of politicians to purchase political influence through sweetheart deals, unquote. There's a lot of smoke here, isn't there?

Yes. could Hunter have I never have gotten these kinds of deals, the position on the board of Burrisome, if his last name wasn't Biden. And that is a good question, but even more than that, because plenty of people use their last name to try to get some kind of deals. But was the president himself directly implicated? I want to kind of take through a quick timeline that was released by the oversight committee to kind of show maybe how this money was moved around. It's a little detail, but I try to go through quickly. So this is from the committee. So on, this started, This is started in 2017.

So on August 8, this Chinese linked company sent $5 million to Hunter Biden's business partner whose name's Hudson West. The third is a Chinese national. The same day, Hudson West sent $400,000 to Hunter Biden's company. And then a week later, August 14th, Hunter Biden took $150,000 of that money and sent it to a thing called Lion Hall Group LLC, a company owned by James and Sarah Biden, which is the president's brother and sister-in-law. And then by the end of the month, Sarah Biden wrote with your $50,000 in cash, and then deposited the money in her and her husband's personal checking account on the same day.

And then September 3rd, she wrote a check to Joe Biden for $40,000 for, quote, loan repayment. You know, that's all within a few days, really within 30 days, it looks like, that the money went from Chinese link company to Hunter Biden and his Chinese national partner and then funneled through to a Biden family member and to the president himself. That's based on the transactions that the Oversight Committee has access to, go to subpoenas and things. They released some bank records. But I don't know, Dan, I mean, that seems pretty, that's the first that we've really

reported and seen such a line by line explanation of what exactly what was going on. And all this money, all these transactions you talked about, the money involved in that transactions that all originated from a Chinese company. Yeah, I mean, it's a, yeah, basically right. Interesting. It seems like every week, Casey, new evidence comes out about it. I mean, where is the House Oversight Committee with this investigation? Are we expecting, you know, anything formal happening soon, or is this just going to continue to be a slow leak of evidence well into next year? You know, I think it's going to be that slow leak. I think there's some politics going on here if they want this slow leak to go into the election cycle.

But remember, this is part of an impeachment inquiry. So I think they're ultimately trying to build enough evidence to file this, you know, some kind of article's impeachment against the president. But I think strategically maybe that's not the best move for them because as soon as they file the articles and Biden is, you know, acquitted, which is very possible, it can kind of end the story. You know, it's saying any evidence after that, you can say, okay, we already dealt with this. Like, why are you guys still digging this up? The president was acquitted. But until they actually have the vote, and as long as it's still an impeachment inquiry, you know, you can still say, hey, we're gathering evidence. And it's more a political operation. Because whether the president is guilty or not, might honestly have no bearing on whether or not he gets impeached.

Hunter Biden, Mr. President requested to testify publicly before this committee, not behind closed doors, just briefly catch us up on that. Yeah, so Hunter Biden received a subpoena and to do a private deposition. And being his lawyer, he said, hey, you guys have been distorting these private depositions. I don't want to do it. I want to testify publicly before Congress. And, you know, that was very surprising. It really broke some news.

And so I think lawmakers were little taken aback, but they said, well, you're still going to be deposed privately, but you can have your day in public as well. So just to clarify how that Northern Internet, National Capital Holdings is linked to a Chinese energy company. I'm not sure it's quite accurate to say that it is a Chinese company, but it has a relationship to the Chinese linked energy company. Right. Okay.

Well, thank you for clarifying that. Casey, I know you're going to continue to cover this story. Listeners can keep up on the ongoing investigation at thecentersquare. But we are out of time. For Casey Harper, I'm Dan McHaleb. Please subscribe. Thank you for listening. Knowledge is power.

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