Joe Biden was “at the center of a family money-making scheme,” according to a year-long congressional investigation led by James Comer. James Comer claimed to have discovered that nearly $30 million had been funneled into the first family’s accounts.
In his new book, the Republican congressman from Kentucky details how Biden’s son Hunter and brother Jim peddled the “Biden brand” to foreign governments and businesspeople to rake in cash.
“I can honestly say that I don’t know a single thing. just Comer wrote in the Jan. 14 issue of “All the President’s Money: Investigating the Secret Foreign Scheme That Enriched the Biden Family.”
The book also details the many questionable obstacles Comer’s Oversight and Government Accountability Committee encountered along the way.
These obstacles included everything from battles with top Democrats on the committee who tried to discredit the evidence Comer found, to the Washington press corps and the intelligence community.
Comer, the committee chairman, compared D.C. journalists to “Democratic publicists and publicists.”
He specifically criticized officials at the IRS and FBI for being “slow in their investigations” and for leaking “false stories” about his findings to the media.
Comer wrote that he requested more than 200 documents from the administration during the first two years of Biden’s presidency but “received not a single response.”
He attempted to access the Biden family’s bank records early in the investigation, but was reduced to pleading with the Treasury Department to hand over the records.
Initial research showed there were dozens of suspicious activity reports (SARs) filed by at least six banks that processed transactions for the first son, Hunter.
A SAR is a form that banks fill out when they discover unusual transactions that may violate the law. The form is then submitted to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, an agency within the federal Department of the Treasury, for follow-up.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen claimed in the book that she delayed Comer’s request to view the SAR for two months.
When Comer and his staff were finally granted permission to peruse U.S. Treasury documents, the elevator broke down when his team entered the building. He felt it was an apt metaphor for the challenges he faced. He tried to follow the money.
“When we got to the top of the building, I gasped and said to my colleagues, ‘I’m glad there wasn’t a senator with us, otherwise I would have passed out halfway through,’” he wrote about the 2023 visit. .
SAR was central to the investigation, most of which had already been cited in previous reports on the Biden family’s wealth, Comer said.
He added: “We knew that no bank would file a SAR against the family of a sitting Vice President of the United States without a reasonable assurance that a serious financial crime had been committed.” He added that the SAR pointed out the following possible crimes: From money laundering to bribery.
They discovered 170 SARs associated with Hunter Biden, 20 more than previously known from six banks, as well as previously unknown accounts and 20 shell companies controlled by Hunter.
“Bidens was also the subject of an additional 50 SARs filed against others,” Comer wrote.
According to Comer’s book, the committee’s analysis of Biden’s bank records, along with testimony from Hunter’s business associates, showed millions of dollars coming from sources in China, Ukraine, Romania and Kazakhstan.
Jim and Hunter were allegedly receiving money from foreign companies in exchange for finding business leaders and customers. But no products were sold or investment advice was given, he added, and the shell companies were simply taking cash for access.
Comer wrote that Hunter received a salary of more than $5 million from Ukraine’s Burisma Energy Company between May 2014 and April 2019 in exchange for “holding a handsome board position.” He also added that Hunter knew almost nothing about the energy sector and that his main value was his proximity. With the “Biden brand.”
For example, Kazakh businessman Kenes Rakishev wired Hunter $142,000 to purchase a Porsche in April 2014. The cash came around the same time that Joe Biden dined with Rakishev at a Washington restaurant at Hunter’s request when he was still vice president.
The image of the expensive car appeared in a photo from Hunter Biden’s laptop, which showed the car smoking a cigarette while spinning at up to 170 miles per hour.
The laptop, which was left at a Delaware repair shop and first revealed by The Post in 2020, contains thousands of emails, text messages and photos detailing Hunter’s shady business dealings and struggles with substance abuse.
Hunter Biden’s lack of expertise in the energy sector didn’t stop him from demanding cash from energy and finance company China Energy Corporation (CEFC).
The company has been linked to the Chinese Communist Party and China’s Belt and Road Initiative. “It’s an international plan to build infrastructure in Third World countries. By issuing loans that China can never pay, China writes those countries can never pay,” Comer wrote.
According to Comer’s book, the Bidens began working with big business when Joe Biden was vice president.
Comer was able to trace the bounty shared by the Biden family to a July 30, 2017, WhatsApp call from Hunter Biden to CEFC colleague Raymond Zhao. In that call, he demanded $10 million, claiming his father was sitting next to him.
As The Post’s graphic shows, on Aug. 8 Northern International Capital, a CEFC affiliate, sent $5 million to Hudson West III, a joint venture formed by Hunter and Gongwen Dong, another CEFC affiliate.
That same day, Hudson West III sent $400,000 to Owasco PC, a company controlled by Hunter Biden.
Six days later, on August 14, Owasco sent $150,000 to Lion Hall Group, run by Jim Biden and his wife Sarah Biden.
On August 28, Sarah withdrew $50,000 in cash from Lion Hall Group and deposited it into a joint account with her husband, Jim Biden. On September 3, Sara wrote Joe a check for $40,000, writing “Loan Repayment” in the memo field.
Comer said he knew he had a “smoking gun” when he discovered a check that showed money laundering, but most of the mainstream media was unimpressed. As Jim Biden, the “most implausible” witness before the committee, confirmed in 2018 that there was no loan agreement to “repay” $200,000 to his brother.
Last month, the National Archives released a bombshell photo of Joe Biden introducing Hunter to Chinese leader Xi Jinping and other business leaders during a state visit to China in December 2013.
According to Jason Galanis, a former Hunter business associate who is serving 16 years in prison for fraud, the eldest son’s main goal was “to make billions of dollars, not just millions” for his family.
Hunter, who was convicted of gun charges and tax evasion, was luckier than Galanis. He received a controversial pardon from his father last year.
Joe Biden was also a willing participant in his son’s get-rich-quick schemes. Comer wrote that he was a “big guy” who got 10%.
He served as vice president for eight years, giving two speeches in Romania in 2014 and 2015 in which he “denounced corruption in the country while his family participated.” Biden gave his first speech on May 21, 2014.
“Corruption is just another form of tyranny,” Joe said as part of his speech.
Months after the speech, the Bidens received more than $1 million through a Biden family associate from a company run by Romanian businessman Gabriel Popoviciu, who is being investigated for corruption, according to Comer.
Biden also lectured Ukraine on corruption while Hunter accepted cash to attend a Burisma board meeting in 2016. The payout was threatened due to allegations of corruption among Burisma executives.
In a January 2018 Council on Foreign Relations panel discussion, Biden acknowledged that he had threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees unless the Ukrainian government fired Viktor Shokin, the prosecutor investigating Burisma.
Biden gave them six hours to do so before boarding Air Force Two to return home, Comer wrote.
“Biden later added his famous line, ‘ab-ch, they got fired!’” Comer wrote. Shokin was fired by a parliamentary vote in March 2016, and the investigation into Burisma was halted by his successor.
Despite the difficulties of examining the first family’s assets, Comer and his research team were determined to uncover what he called “the biggest corruption scandal of my lifetime.”
His work has created a “historic lack of trust in our nation’s federal law enforcement agencies,” he wrote, and is likely to result in Democrats losing at the polls in November.
In the end, Comer says his survey gave American voters “an opportunity to decide for themselves what the appropriate form of accountability is for Joe Biden and his allies.”
