Did China Bribe Biden to Protect a U.S. Bank Takeover?

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog

 

“I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” Hunter Biden threatened in a WhatsApp message to a CEFC associate.

If his demands were not met, the future president’s son warned, “I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction.”

Hunter would later claim that Joe Biden wasn’t actually there and he had been drunk or high.

Whatever the truth, next month a CEFC affiliate sent $5 million, half of the $10 million Hunter had demanded, to a joint company set up by Hunter and a CEFC figure, $400,000 was then transferred to a shell company, $150,000 was diverted to a company controlled by Joe Biden’s brother James, $50,000 of which was diverted to a personal checking account and $40,000 of which was sent as a personal check to Joe Biden for a “loan repayment.”

But one unanswered question is why CEFC China Energy would have been intimidated by Biden’s threats at all. In July 2017, Joe Biden was out of the White House and while he was a potential presidential candidate, that was still years away.

Why did CEFC feel nervous enough to cut the Bidens a very sizable check in 2017?

The answer may lie with a March 2017 deal in which CEFC had tried to acquire a stake in the Cowen Group: a somewhat obscure investment bank based out of New York City. The deal would have had to win the approval of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) and under the Trump administration, China’s investments were not winning approval.

CEFC’s 19.9% stake in the Cowen Group came at the same time as CFIUS was scrutinizing attempted Chinese purchases of MoneyGram, Genworth Financial and Lattice Semiconductor. These various deals fell apart or, as in CEFC’s case, were shut down by CFIUS. By August, CEFC had cut their check to the Bidens, but by September were forced to refile their proposal, and by November had announced that CFIUS process was just too onerous to continue.

The timeline raises the distinct possibility that CEFC was protecting its Cowen Group investment while trying to avoid any problems during the CFIUS process. While CFIUS is led by the heads of departments such as the Treasury Department and the Department of Defense, CEFC might have reasonably believed that the former VP could cause problems.

Or it may have been working on a Plan B to wait and refile under a future Biden administration.

But an underlying question is what did CEFC, a Chinese energy company, want with a New York investment bank? The answer may be that some Chinese companies looking to expand into the United States had found it easier to buy into existing American investment companies.

The huge investments in Morgan Stanley and Blackstone by the China Investment Corporation, the Communist country’s largest sovereign wealth fund, helped open the door to a generation of deals. Canyon Bridge Capital Partners, a Chinese backed fund, had struggled and failed to acquire Lattice, a tech company with potential military applications.

What was CEFC after? The Bidens were looking for energy investments in the U.S. for CEFC. A year earlier, CEFC had tried to buy into Putin’s Rosneft and into the Czech Republic. CEFC’s ties to the Communist regime would have made a deal for any major asset of strategic importance in the energy sector a challenging matter to get past CFIUS review, but by acquiring a stake in an existing American financial institution, CEFC may have hoped to bypass it.

Cowen would have served as a front group for CEFC and its backers in the Communist system.

Two years before Hunter’s late night rant and the $5 million check, the “Made in China 2025” strategy to build up the Communist dictatorship’s domestic industries through “mergers, equity investment and venture capital investment overseas” had already been announced.

This would and indeed did bypass CFIUS on some occasions especially when the companies involved were more obscure. And a former VP and even his addict son could however have blown the whistle and spoiled the first step of a potential process for buying a strategic asset.

The Cowen Group deal did not evade CFIUS scrutiny and the prolonged review process scuttled the deal, but by then the Bidens had gotten paid and that was what mattered.

What was China getting from the Bidens? Among other things it may have been silence.

Hunter Biden and his business partners might have understood CEFC’s plans and while they were between presidencies, they had more than enough connections in D.C. to make the Cowen deal and whatever goals it was meant to achieve into enough of an issue that would have doomed it.

Once Hunter had sent his WhatsApp message, his Chinese business partners would have seen it as a threat from Joe Biden, and would have intended the money as a bribe for the future president.

While CEFC was raiding America, it believed it was paying off the former vice president.

Earlier in 2017, Biden business partners had tried to solicit Joe Biden to attend a CEFC meeting because the “B family” needed a “top person at same level as chairman, who would like to access China or money”. That was followed by a warning, “Don’t mention Joe being involved, it’s only when u are face to face, I know u know that but they are paranoid.” While Biden never showed up to that meeting, his name kept showing up in business dealings involving CEFC later that year.

A year after the infamous “sitting here with my father” message, the New York Times finally ran a story discussing Hunter’s CEFC dealings. Joe Biden then left a message for his son, “I thought the article released online, it’s going to be printed tomorrow in the Times, was good.”

“I think you’re clear,” he added.

 

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.

Now's the Time That Tries Men's Souls

By Rich Kozlovich

Andrea Widburg over at American thinker reported how Michelle Obama just got $750,000 for a single speech in Munich.    I  think it reasonable to ask:  What in the world could anyone say that was worth $750,000 dollars?  Has she discovered some new and life saving device or compound?  No.  In fact, her greatest accomplishment in her eight years as the nation's First Lady, according to Mychal Massie over at the Daily Rant, was:

She spent eight years redefining usufruct. She spent eight years living like royalty right from a Shakespearean drama.........She spent eight years treating the American taxpayers as her personal American Express Black Card, the most exclusive credit card available today..........

Mychal went on to quote from his May 14, 2014 article, Michelle Obama: Most Shameful First Lady in History, as he reminded people:

The Obama woman left no piles of manure not stepped in, as she waddled through the chicken yard of fomenting racial acrimony. She was as unoriginal as rain in the springtime in her feigned laments, but if old lies work why tell new ones?  She used the decorative position she enjoys as her personal taxpayer-provided American Express Black Card, arguably the most exclusive credit card in the world.

Mychal has way with words.  

Andrea went on to say:

I’m not a Michelle Obama fan. She came from an affluent black Chicago family; got into the Ivy Leagues (probably through affirmative action, given the childishly poor quality of her bachelor’s thesis); obtained jobs for which she was not qualified and that required no work but nevertheless paid her very, very well; and ended up as America’s First Lady for eight years. Along the way, she and her husband amassed at least $70 million, a wealth package that includes three mansions, one in D.C., one in Martha’s Vineyard, and one in Hawaii.

So, what's their explanation for paying this totally unaccomplished person such an obscene amount of money?  The audience was just desperate to hear what words of wisdom she would impart in order to make their lives more meaningful!!!  Wow! Really?

But perhaps, just perhaps, there just might be a better explanation.  There are those who really believe she's going to be the Democrat nominee for President of the United States, and there are those, and I think rightly so, believe the left will pull out all the stops in voter fraud in 2024 that will make the fraudulent election of 2020 seem like child's play in order to get "their" Manchurian candidate in office in the 2024 election.  

So, maybe..... just maybe....these left wing European businessmen might be thinking a mere $750,000 is a cheap price for access to the White House.  Perhaps....just perhaps....this could be called a legal bribe?

And for those who just know there's no such thing as an organized conspiracy, Robert Bishop offers this insightful piece, Unmasking the Action Network.

The Bidens: "Stone Cold Crooked" (9) -- When Can We Start Calling It What It Is, Namely Bribery?

September 19, 2023 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

The Biden family corruption scandal gets deeper with every passing day. Speaker Kevin McCarthy finally opened an impeachment investigation in the House last week, and now the first hearing in that investigation has been scheduled for September 28 before the House Oversight Committee.

So what is the potential impeachable offense? You will undoubtedly recall, in the context of the two Trump impeachments, the endless semantic contortions that took place trying to shoe-horn Trump’s conduct into the vague constitutional catchall of “high crimes and misdemeanors” that might support an impeachment. Now, with Biden, the conduct at issue goes by various euphemisms like “the family business,” “business dealings with foreign nationals,” “influence peddling,” “selling access,” or maybe just “corruption.” But are these impeachable offenses?

Well, how about “bribery”? In Biden’s case, there is no need for creative legal argumentation. Biden’s crime is right there in the list set out in Constitution Article II, Section 4:

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

And yet for some reason participants in the public discussion of the Bidens’ conduct seem remarkably reluctant to call a spade a spade. The reluctance spans both sides of the political divide, and even extends to the websites of the House of Representatives that discuss the ongoing investigations. Here are a few recent examples (out of hundreds):

• From NBC News, May 10: “The Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee mounted more attacks Wednesday against President Joe Biden and his family, alleging that relatives of the president engaged in business with foreign nationals. . . .”
• From ABC News, September 14: “[O]n Capitol Hill, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy this week said he would initiate an impeachment inquiry against President Biden over his alleged role in his son's influence-peddling. . . .”
• From the New York Post, August 14: “The evidence that President Joe Biden benefited directly from son Hunter’s influence-peddling operation just keeps mounting.”
• From PBS, today: “Republicans — led by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy — have contended in recent weeks that Biden’s actions from his time as vice president show a “culture of corruption,” and that his son used the “Biden brand” to advance his business with foreign clients.”
• Or even from the House Oversight Committee itself, September 13: “There is mounting evidence that Joe Biden was involved in his family’s influence peddling schemes, including while he served as Vice President.”

“Bribery” is not a complicated crime to understand. It has its own section of the U.S. criminal statutes, 18 U.S.C. Section 201. In case there were any doubt what this is about, the title of the section is “Bribery of public officials and witnesses.” Here are the parts of that section relevant to Biden’s conduct:

(b) Whoever—(2) being a public official or person selected to be a public official, directly or indirectly, corruptly . . . seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value personally or for any other person or entity, in return for:

(A) being influenced in the performance of any official act; . . . shall be fined under this title or not more than three times the monetary equivalent of the thing of value, whichever is greater, or imprisoned for not more than fifteen years, or both, and may be disqualified from holding any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.

Read through that, and you find that the crime of bribery of a public official only has three elements: 

(1) “corruptly seek[ing], receiv[ing] [or] accept[ing] anything of value”; (2) “in return for”; and (3) “being influenced in the performance of any official act.”

Of the various instances of corruption involving Joe Biden, the facts relating to Hunter Biden’s service on the Burisma board of directors most closely track the specific elements of the bribery statute. As to seeking, receiving or accepting anything of value, Hunter was paid at least $3 million over several years for board service that involved minimal work and no visible contribution to the enterprise other than access to his father. The board service began in 2014, when Joe was Vice President, and immediately after Joe was named “point man” for U.S. foreign policy in Ukraine. After a corruption investigation into Burisma in Ukraine began in 2015, Burisma’s number one corporate objective became ending that investigation. 

On November 2, 2015 Burisma executive Vadym Pozharsky stated to Hunter Biden in an email that Burisma’s “ultimate purpose” was to “close down” “any cases/pursuits against Nikolay [i.e., Burisma chairman Mykola Zlochevsky] in Ukraine.” Then, according to the Congressional testimony of Hunter Biden’s partner and Burisma co-board member Devon Archer, after a Burisma board meeting in Dubai on December 4, 2015, Zlochevsky and Pozharsky stepped out with Hunter to “call Washington.” A few days later Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Kyiv, and, as he himself has admitted on a widely-viewed videotape, threatened to withhold a billion dollars of U.S. aid to the country unless the prosecutor investigating Burisma was fired. And the prosecutor was fired.

In other words, the prima facie case of all of the elements of bribery is right there. It is what they call a lay down. Sure Biden has a couple of things he claims as defenses — mainly, that all the money went to his son, and that firing the prosecutor was official U.S. policy coming from people other than him. At this point those defenses look very weak, although maybe Biden can make something out of them.

But the fundamental point is that this is not situation of murky facts that somehow need to be contorted and shoe-horned into some obscure statute in order to make out a possible impeachable offense. This is a case where the prima facie case of a crime, and of a constitutionally enumerated impeachable offense, is right there in front of our eyes. And the crime in question is the main bribery statute.

It’s high time that everybody stopped calling Biden’s alleged wrongdoing by euphemisms like “influence peddling” or “foreign business dealings” — neither of which are terms specifically referencing an impeachable offense, let alone a crime. We should all start using the correct and obviously applicable constitutional and statutory term, which is “bribery.”

Grassley’s Biden Bribery Bombshell

FBI informant: Joe, Hunter took $10 million bribe

 by Jeffrey Lord July 21, 2023

Well there’s a way to wake up a sleepy summer. Here is the front-page headline from Thursday’s New York Post:

FAMILY BUSINESS - Biden $10M bribe file released: Burisma chief said he was ‘coerced’ to pay Joe, ‘stupid’ Hunter in bombshell allegations. Ukrainian oligarch allegedly said his dog was “smarter” than Hunter Biden, but that payments needed “so everything will be okay.”

The story by Post White House reporter Steven Nelson begins this way: 

WASHINGTON — A bombshell FBI informant file containing a $10 million bribery allegation against President Biden and his son was released Thursday by Sen. Chuck Grassley, showing that a Ukrainian oligarch claimed he was “coerced” into making the payoff.

Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of natural gas company Burisma Holdings, told the FBI informant in 2016 while meeting at a coffee shop in Vienna, Austria, that “it cost 5 [million] to pay one Biden, and 5 [million] to another Biden,” according to the redacted FD-1023 form.

Well now.  There, plain as day, is a flat-out statement that “the owner of natural gas company Burisma Holdings” asserts he paid a $10 million bribe to the then–vice president and his son.  And then there was this: ...............To Read More.....

Shocking news confirming Biden’s ‘big guy’ status—and the media’s cover-up - By Andrea Widburg  July 21, 2023 - Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) released a shocking document: It’s an FBI report from a Confidential Human Source (“CHS”) revealing that the FBI and, by extension, the DOJ have known since at least June 2020 that a Burisma executive asserted that Hunter and Joe Biden were receiving millions of dollars for Joe to act on behalf of Burisma—and that Joe Biden was doing this while he was still Vice President. Just as bad is the fact that the mainstream media is doing everything in its power to ignore or downplay this information.  Grassley released the CHS document along with a summary of what it reveals:............

 

My Take -  Remember when Joe Biden said Hunter was the smartest person he knows? On another site that published this story there's a line there I think is priceless, where a Ukrainian "oligarch" claimed his "dog was smarter than Hunter Biden." 

Biden's $50,000-per-year journalist tax credit estimated to cost taxpayers $1.6B

By Haris Alic - The Washington Times - Thursday, November 4, 2021 

The lucrative $50,000-per-year journalist tax break that Democrats have tucked within President Biden’s multitrillion-dollar social welfare bill is estimated to cost taxpayers more than $1.6 billion over the next decade.

A new analysis of the legislation by the Joint Committee on Taxation, a special congressional panel made up of 10 senior lawmakers from both chambers of Congress, found that taxpayers would be on the hook for more than $1.6 billion if the tax credit becomes law.
The credit would allow “local news” outlets to receive a quarterly tax credit, “equal to 50%” of a journalist’s wages up to a cap of $12,500-per-quarter.

Overall, eligible outlets could receive as much as $50,000 annually per journalist in tax breaks through the program in its first year. In subsequent years, the credit would drop to 30% of a journalist’s wages per quarter. Democrats propose to let the tax credit expire after five years unless Congress votes to renew.......To Read More....

 Robin's Take - Another outrage!  Democrats trying to pay back "journalists" for being grossly partisan hacks protecting them at every turn while doing all they can to harm the right

Clinton ally gave $500K to wife of FBI agent on email probe

GOPUSA Staff

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime Clinton confidant, helped steer $675,000 to the election campaign of the wife of an FBI official who went on to lead the probe into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email system, according to a report......To Read More....

Democrats 2020: Trillions and Trillions and Trillions More

In what world do Democrats live? It’s definitely not the world of reality.

By Ned Ryun July 10th, 2019

We’re currently witnessing one of the greatest attempts at mass bribery in history. With each passing week the Democrats running for the 2020 nomination offer yet another bribe for winning more votes.

The most recent is Senator Kamala Harris’s $100 billion dollar plan for black home ownership. But this is child’s play compared to everything else the Democrats have either proposed or endorsed.

Consider the 10-year cost estimates for some of the major plans that most, if not all, of the potential 2020 nominees have already embraced: Medicare for All, otherwise known as socialized medicine, is $32.6 trillion. The Green New Deal, also known as coercive environmental socialism, is $93 trillion. Universal basic income, in which people would become paid wards of the state, is $38 trillion.

Slavery reparations would cost $14 trillion, but once that Pandora’s box is opened, where do you actually draw the line and decide who would get money and why? As for erasing college debt and free college, that’s about $2.4 trillion in the first decade—which counts as “modest” in this context.

The cost of all of those plans combined in the first 10 years is $180 trillion. That’s just one decade. Consider the fact that many government run programs are nowhere near actual estimated costs but typically run well over..............To Read More....

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