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Former Biden Business Associate Flips, Confirms Hunter Traded on His Dad's Influence

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Evidence is mounting that former Vice President Joe Biden not only knew his man-child son, Hunter Biden, was profiting from his powerful perch in government, but that Joe Biden himself may have financially benefited from these arrangements.

A new story of Biden family corruption has emerged, and it is independent of the New York Post bombshell last week about the emails found on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Breitbart News editor and president of the Government Accountability Institute Peter Schweizer broke the news on Friday that associates of Hunter Biden quickly arranged a White House meeting in November 2011 for a delegation of Chinese business leaders and Communist Party officials. This visit apparently included a meeting with the vice president himself.

Schweizer, the author of several books that trace the money trail of Bill and Hillary Clinton and the Bidens’ many questionable transactions, has forged a relationship with Bevan Cooney, one of Hunter Biden’s former business partners.

In a Breitbart piece published Friday, co-written by Seamus Bruner, associate director of research at the Government Accountability Institute, Schweizer wrote that Cooney was involved with Hunter Biden and their mutual associate Devon Archer in a 2016 bond fraud investment scheme that landed him in prison.

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Archer was convicted in the same case, however, a “federal judge vacated his conviction. But an appellate court overturned the lower court judge’s ruling, reinstating Archer’s conviction,” Schweizer and Bruner wrote. He is currently awaiting sentencing, according to Fox News. Hunter Biden was never indicted in the scheme.

Needless to say, Cooney feels some resentment toward Biden and told Schweizer he “believes he was the ‘fall guy’ for the fraud scheme,” Schweizer and Bruner wrote.

After reading Schweizer’s 2018 book, “Secret Empires,” Cooney contacted the author through investigative journalist Matthew Tyrmand and has since provided the password to his email account to Schweizer, whose team has begun wading through some 26,000 emails, Schweizer and Bruner wrote.

Schweizer and Bruner wrote that “the emails offer a unique window into just how the Biden universe conducted business during the Obama-Biden Administration. These associates sought to trade on Hunter Biden’s relationship with, and access to, his father and the Obama-Biden White House in order to generate business.”

Do you believe Joe Biden was involved in his son Hunter's influence peddling?

You will note that Hunter Biden apparently did not participate in arranging the November 2011 meeting Schweizer and Bruner describe, because, you see, he was busy at the time. In one of the email messages, Archer wrote that Hunter “was traveling in the UAE for the week with royalty.”

Nonetheless, his associates spotted an opportunity and acted.

Schweizer and Bruner explained the sequence of events.

On November 5, 2011, Gary Fears, a business associate of Biden and Archer, forwarded an email he had received from Mohammed Khashoggi, who was acting as an intermediary to Archer on behalf of the China Entrepreneur Club (CEC).

Khashoggi’s email, dated Oct. 19, 2011, told Fears that the CEC would like to send, as Schweizer and Bruner described it, a delegation of “Chinese billionaires, Chinese Communist Party loyalists, and at least one ‘respected diplomat’ from Beijing” to Washington for a White House visit.

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If Fears and his associates could make this happen, Khashoggi wrote, it would be a great opportunity for the group (Biden, Archer, Fears) to attract “potentially outstanding new clients” and would provide them with “good access to [the Chinese] for any deal in the future.”

The CEC had already tried several times to arrange such a meeting, but had been rebuffed, Schweizer and Bruner wrote.

“Despite its benign name, CEC has been called ‘a second foreign ministry’ for the People’s Republic of China—a communist government that closely controls most businesses in its country. CEC was established in 2006 by a group of businessmen and Chinese government diplomats,” Schweizer and Bruner wrote.

In his Oct. 19 email, Khashoggi wrote, “I know it is political season and people are hesitant but a group like this does not come along every day. A tour of the white house and a meeting with a member of the chief of staff’s office and [then-Secretary of State] John Kerry would be great. Not sure if one has to be registered to do this.”

By “registered,” Khashoggi was likely referring to the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), Schweizer and Bruner wrote. According to the Department of Justice, the act requires “certain agents of foreign principals who are engaged in political activities or other activities specified under the statute to make periodic public disclosure of their relationship with the foreign principal, as well as activities, receipts and disbursements in support of those activities.”

Referring to the group of Chinese visitors, Khashoggi informed Fears, “This is China Inc.,” and described exactly it was looking for. “Biggest priority for the CEC group is to see the White House, and have a senior US politician, or senior member of Obama’s administration, give them a tour… If your friend in DC can help, we would be extremely grateful.”

The visit was quickly arranged and took place on Nov. 14, 2011.

Schweizer and Bruner wrote that the Obama-Biden Administration visitor log archives confirm the visit took place and that the group “enjoyed high-level access.”

A copy of the email chain can be viewed on Scribd below.

The visitor logs show nothing about the group’s meeting with Biden, Schweizer and Bruner wrote.

However, Schweizer and Bruner present a document that contains the biographies of important members of the CEC. Among them is Secretary-General Maggie Cheng, whose entry boasts of “successful business missions” to the United States in 2011, to the United Kingdom in 2012, and to France/Belgium in 2013.

“The delegation was received with the highest respect and greatest hospitality by the host countries,” the biography states, before listing a series of high-ranking officials of the various countries involved.

The very first name on the list is “U.S. Vice President Joe Biden.”

Biden and Archer apparently reaped the rewards from this meeting two years later. In 2013, Schweizer and Bruner wrote, the Chinese government founded the Bohai Harvest Investment fund. Two U.S. investment companies, Thornton Group LLC and Rosemont Seneca Partners, were selected to participate in this venture. It should come as no surprise that Hunter Biden was associated with both.

In a Friday night appearance on Fox News’ “Hannity,” according to Breitbart News, Schweizer made clear his team had only begun sifting through Cooney’s email and said we should expect another report in the next few days.

If it indeed took place, such a high-level meeting between Chinese business leaders and then-Vice President Biden might not have broken the law (although it may have been a FARA violation), but it is extraordinarily unethical and extremely disturbing, especially considering Biden’s presence was not officially recorded in visitor logs.

Most importantly, it could potentially compromise a future President Biden in his dealings with China. Now that U.S. relations with China are strained to say the least, this is more problematic than ever.

If a potential Biden administration were faced with consequential decisions concerning communist China, it’s appropriate to ask if U.S. interests would take a back seat to Biden’s own business dealings with the country.

Looked at in this context, the emails on Hunter Biden’s laptop are even more problematic.

One of those emails shows an individual identified as “the big guy” as receiving a 10 percent share in a deal with CEFC, China’s largest private energy company.

On Friday night, Fox News reported that “the big guy” is a reference to former Vice President Joe Biden. The source of this revelation is an individual who had been copied on the thread.

I am not a lawyer, but that sure sounds illegal to me.

These stories are becoming too big for Twitter, Facebook and the mainstream media to hide. And my guess is now that the floodgates have opened, we will hear more damaging reports every day. With only 15 days until the election, it may be difficult for Biden to recover.

Schweizer ended his segment on “Hannity” by describing the latest trove of information as a “veritable United Nations of corruption,”  Breitbart reported.

That sounds like an accurate assessment.

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Elizabeth writes commentary for The Western Journal and The Washington Examiner. Her articles have appeared on many websites, including MSN, RedState, Newsmax, The Federalist and RealClearPolitics. Please follow Elizabeth on Twitter or LinkedIn.
Elizabeth is a contract writer at The Western Journal. Her articles have appeared on many conservative websites including RedState, Newsmax, The Federalist, Bongino.com, HotAir, MSN and RealClearPolitics.

Please follow Elizabeth on Twitter.




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