Comer demands Rob Walker, Biden biz associate behind China cash, detail Joe’s role
WASHINGTON — House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer on Friday demanded that Biden family business associate Rob Walker submit to questioning about his role in distributing more than $1 million from China to at least three of President Biden’s relatives.
Subpoenaed bank records indicate Walker, an ex-Clinton administration official, distributed Chinese funds in early 2017 to President Biden’s brother James Biden, son Hunter Biden and daughter-in-law Hallie Biden — with $70,000 going to an unidentified Biden whose first name was not specified.
“The Committee on Oversight and Accountability is investigating President Biden’s involvement in his family’s business practices [and] has identified you as a critical witness in this matter,” Comer (R-Ky.) wrote to Walker.
The chairman gave Walker one week — until March 24 — to schedule a transcribed interview with committee staff. Although the request isn’t legally binding, Republicans can convert the invitation into a subpoena if Walker refuses to comply.
“When speaking about dealings with the Biden family, Rob Walker once said that exposing him would ‘bury all of us, man.’ Why? The Oversight Committee has many questions for Rob Walker and we look forward to getting answers for the American people,” Comer said in a statement.
Walker could not immediately be reached for comment. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The newly released bank records raise new questions about the Biden family’s international consulting work — implicating for the first time Hallie Biden, the widow of Joe Biden’s son Beau Biden who became a lover of his other son, Hunter.
The bank records indicate that Walker received $3 million on March 1, 2017 — less than two months after Biden left office as vice president — from State Energy HK Limited, a firm affiliated with CEFC China Energy, and then sent $1,065,000 to business partner James Gilliar and a nearly identical amount to Biden relatives over three months.
“It is unclear what services were provided in return,” Comer said.
Walker’s bank records show an earlier and smaller three-way division in 2015 of an international wire from an unknown source — with Gilliar, Walker and Hunter Biden each getting $59,900 — Comer’s office said Thursday, suggesting the CEFC business relationship may have started while Biden was still vice president.
Joe Biden’s role in the CEFC deal remains murky — as often is the case with his relatives’ foreign business ventures.
The Post exclusively reported in October 2020 that Hunter’s former laptop included a May 2017 email from Gilliar proposing that the “big guy” get 10% of the CEFC deal.
A whistleblower, former Hunter Biden associate Tony Bobulinski, alleges that he personally met with Joe Biden in May 2017 to discuss the CEFC venture.
Both Bobulinski and Gilliar have identified Joe Biden as the “big guy.”
Hunter and James Biden ultimately received at least $4.8 million in 2017 and 2018 from CEFC — a since-defunct reputed arm of Beijing’s “Belt and Road” foreign influence initiative — according to the Washington Post’s review of laptop records.
Evidence hinting at Joe Biden’s involvement includes September 2017 emails showing Hunter Biden asked for a new sign and more keys to an office he was renting in DC’s House of Sweden building.
The sign was to say, “The Biden Foundation and Hudson West (CEFC-US)” and the keys were for his father, stepmother Jill Biden, uncle James and a Chinese executive named Gongwen Dong.
A spokeswoman for the agency that oversees the property told the Washington Post, however, that the sign was never changed and the keys were not picked up.
An October 2017 email identifies Joe Biden as a participant in a call about CEFC’s attempt to purchase US natural gas.
Republicans accuse Biden of being too soft on China on issues from allowing a spy balloon to traverse US airspace to determining the origins of COVID-19, which killed more than 1 million Americans, and stopping fentanyl exports, which killed about 196,000 Americans from 2018 to 2021 alone.
Biden last month laughed dismissively and told The Post, “Give me a break, man,” when asked if his ability to deal with China was “compromised” by his family’s business relations with Chinese state-linked entities.
In a separate Chinese business deal, Hunter Biden co-founded BHR Partners in 2013 within weeks of joining then-Vice President Biden aboard Air Force Two on an official trip to Beijing, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Hunter introduced his dad to incoming BHR CEO Jonathan Li during the trip and Joe Biden later wrote college recommendation letters for Li’s children.
The Journal reported that Hunter Biden’s “paid-in capital” to establish BHR Partners was $425,000, according to corporate registration records.
One week after Joe Biden’s 2021 virtual summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Hunter Biden’s attorney Chris Clark said the stake had been divested.
However, records suggest the first son still holds the stake, and neither Clark nor the White House has provided further information on the supposed transaction, such as the dollar amount or buyer’s identity.
Republicans say that the Biden family’s international business deals present conflicts of interest in foreign affairs and may even amount to corruption.
Biden claims that he has “never spoken” with his son about “his overseas business dealings” and that “I have never discussed, with my son or my brother or with anyone else, anything having to do with their businesses.”
There are many examples, however, of Joe Biden meeting with his relatives’ business associates, and Hunter, who is under federal investigation for possible tax fraud and illegal foreign lobbying, said that he paid as much as “half” of his income to his father.
Hunter Biden famously earned up to $1 million per year to serve on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma beginning in 2014 when his dad led the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy.
Laptop records indicate that Joe Biden, as sitting vice president, attended a 2015 DC dinner organized by Hunter that included Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi, who emailed Hunter the next day to thank him for the “opportunity to meet your father.”
Hunter also invited Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina and her husband, ex-Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov, to the 2015 dinner.
A fellow guest told The Post the Russian power couple attended, as did a group of Hunter’s Kazakhstani associates.
A 2020 report from Republican-led Senate committees said that Baturina in 2014 paid $3.5 million to a firm associated with Hunter Biden and further reporting linked the transfer to US real estate purchases.
Baturina and another Russian billionaire with whom Hunter Biden partnered on US real estate investment, Vladimir Yevtuvshenkov, have not been sanctioned by President Biden over the more than one-year war in Ukraine, despite Biden sanctioning much of Russia’s elite in an attempt to stop the war.
Hunter and James Biden also actively courted business from Mexico’s business elite, whom Joe Biden hosted at the vice president’s residence in DC in 2015 before flying Hunter and business associate Jeff Cooper to Mexico City on an official trip in 2016.
James Biden openly boasted about selling influence on his older brother as he and Hunter Biden sought to take over a hedge fund based in New York in 2006, according to the book “The Bidens: Inside the First Family’s Fifty-Year Rise to Power” by Politico reporter Ben Schreckinger.
“Don’t worry about investors,” Jim Biden allegedly told a corporate executive. “We’ve got people all around the world who want to invest in Joe Biden … We’ve got investors lined up in a line of 747s filled with cash.”
After Joe Biden became president, Hunter launched an art career seeking as much as $500,000 for his novice works. Comer is seeking records on the supposedly anonymous buyers, but Manhattan art gallery owner Georges Berges thus far has refused to comply.
