Hunter Biden was at Joe’s Delaware home the same day he used his dad as leverage in China biz text, laptop photos reveal
First son Hunter Biden was at father Joe’s Wilmington, Del., home the same day he used the future president as leverage in a text message sent to a Chinese business associate to close a deal, photos found on his abandoned laptop show — and other evidence suggests the elder Biden was around as well.
Hunter posed in four pictures with a pair of female family members in Joe Biden’s 1967 Corvette Stingray on the evening of Sunday, July 30, 2017, according to metadata obtained by conservative nonprofit group Marco Polo and first reported by the Washington Free Beacon.
Hours earlier, Hunter sent a threatening WhatsApp message to?CEFC employee and translator Raymond?Zhao, saying he was “sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled.”
“Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight,” the now-53-year-old said. “And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, 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.”
IRS supervisory agent Gary Shapley revealed the WhatsApp exchange to the House Ways and Means Committee last month and it was made public Thursday.
Shapley said IRS investigators looking into the first son’s finances obtained the message from Hunter’s iCloud in August 2020 via a search warrant.
CEFC Energy ended up paying $4.8 million to Hunter’s firm Owasco P.C., according to a 2020 Senate report on the first son’s business affairs.
The message and the photos cast fresh doubt upon President Biden’s repeated claims that he never spoke with his son about his overseas business dealings.
Hunter Biden agreed Tuesday to plead guilty to two misdemeanors counts of failing to pay at least $100,000 in taxes on his foreign income in both 2017 and 2018 — ahead of the release of depositions by Shapley and another IRS investigator on the case who accused Biden appointees at the Justice Department of a coverup in the case by blocking harsher charges in jurisdictions outside Delaware.
Two days before Hunter’s message, on Friday, July 28, Biden was photographed minutes away from his home at the BBC Tavern and Grill in Greenville, Del., according to a tweet unearthed by Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY).
“When your aunt and uncle casually live 5 miles from Joe Biden and see him at dinner and hangout [sic],” a Twitter user said before sharing photos of her family members grinning next to the then-former vice president.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and National Security Council spokesman John Kirby repeatedly refused to comment on the president’s whereabouts on July 30, 2017, during a raucous briefing Friday.
“It’s not an unreasonable question to ask whether the president of the United States was involved, as this message seems to suggest, in some sort of a coercive conversation for business dealings by his son … If he wasn’t, then maybe you should tell us,” said New York Times reporter Peter Baker.
Jean-Pierre claimed in response that White House counsel’s office spokesman Ian Sams had addressed the matter — though journalists were unable to immediately locate Sams’ response.
“I believe my colleague at the White House counsel [office] has answered this question already, has dealt with this, has made it very clear. I just don’t have anything to share outside of what my colleagues have shared and so I would refer you to him and the DOJ,” Jean-Pierre said.
Daily Caller reporter Diana Glebova pressed, “[Sams] hasn’t said anything about the text message specifically.”
When Jean-Pierre repeated her answer, saying Sams “has dealt with this,” a reporter for The Post pressed further, “Yes or no, was the president involved in the shakedown attempt?”
“I just answered the question … It’s not up to you how I answer the question,” Jean-Pierre snapped.
Weijia Jiang of CBS News followed up, “Can you just remind us what your colleague said?”
“I would refer you to them and they will share their statement with all of you,” Jean-Pierre said.
The Post again pressed, “There’s evidence that the first son was at the president’s home and that the president was there two days prior.”
Jean-Pierre deflected, “I’m calling on your colleague right now.”
Jiang, whom the press secretary was calling on, took up the line of questioning, saying, “To follow up on my colleague … was the president there or not?”
“I would refer you to my colleagues at the White House counsel. They have addressed this and I would refer you to them,” Jean-Pierre said.
NBC reporter Monica Alba took a slightly different approach, asking Jean-Pierre if she had asked President Biden about “whether he was there with his son on July 30.”
“This is not a conversation that I’ve had with the president. Again, I would refer you to the White House counsel,” Jean-Pierre replied.
Sams, the much-cited spokesman for the counsel’s office, did not directly address the text message in a statement shared with reporters after the briefing.
“As we have said many times before, the President was not in business with his son,” Sams said, without addressing Joe Biden’s whereabouts when the message was sent or any interaction between the men regarding the communication.
Hunter Biden’s attorney Chris Clark did not dispute the authenticity of the text message, but said Friday afternoon, “Any verifiable words or actions of my client, in the midst of a horrible addiction, are solely his own and have no connection to anyone in his family.”
“A close examination of the document released publicly yesterday by a very biased individual raises serious questions over whether it is what he claims it to be,” Clark said, without refuting any specific details. “It is dangerously misleading to make any conclusions or inferences based on this document.”
The IRS whistleblowers said the Justice Department denied their requests to look further into Hunter’s texts or obtain their location data, with some federal prosecutors suggesting the first son may have been lying about his father being present when he sent the text to Zhao.
The tax agents said that Hunter failed to pay $2.2 million in federal taxes on $8.3 million in largely foreign-sourced income from 2014 to 2019.
Delaware US Attorney David Weiss, who led the Hunter Biden probe, also told Shapley during an October 2022 meeting that he “was not the deciding person on whether charges are filed” against the first son, according to a memo drafted by the IRS investigator afterward.
The memo contradicts sworn testimony from Attorney General Merrick Garland that the prosecutor had been given “full authority.”
A Justice Department spokesperson insisted to The Post Friday that Weiss “has full authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges as he deems appropriate. He needs no further approval to do so.”
The rep did not respond to a follow-up question about whether the department believed the whistleblowers had perjured themselves, but Garland repeated the initial assertion at an unrelated news conference in Washington Friday.
“Mr. Weiss was appointed by President Trump as the US Attorney in Delaware and assigned this matter during the previous administration,” the AG said. “[He was] permitted to continue his investigation and to make a decision to prosecute any way in which he wanted to and in any district in which he wanted to. Mr. Weiss has since sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee confirming that he had that authority. I don’t know how it would be possible for anybody to block him from bringing any prosecution given that he had this authority … He was given complete authority to make all decisions on his own.”
Hunter is also known to have had access to the Wilmington home’s garage, where President Biden improperly kept classified documents.
This story was updated June 26, 2023 to reflect additional reporting that indicates Hunter Biden was contacting CEFC translator Raymond Zhao. An earlier version of this story cited Shapley’s testimony that Hunter was texting Henry Zhao, who serves as the chairman of Harvest Fund Management and partnered on a separate deal with the first son’s firm BHR Partners.
