Tony Bobulinski, a former Biden family business associate who insists that President Joe Biden is the “Big Guy” referred to in emails found on the Hunter Biden laptop, alleged in congressional testimony on Feb. 13 that the president was a key “enabler” of some the Biden family’s overseas business dealings.
Mr. Bobulinski gave closed-door testimony on Feb. 13 before the House Oversight Committee, which is helping lead the GOP-led impeachment inquiry into President Biden.
While a complete transcript of Mr. Bobulinski’s testimony is expected to be made available soon by Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), a written opening statement accuses the president of lying when he denied any involvement in his family’s business affairs.
“His family’s foreign influence peddling operation—from China to Ukraine and elsewhere—sold out to foreign actors who were seeking to gain influence and access to Joe Biden and the United States government,” said Mr. Bobulinski, a Navy veteran and former CEO of SinoHawk Holdings, a business in which Hunter Biden, the president’s son, was involved.
“Joe Biden was more than a participant in and beneficiary of his family’s business; he was an enabler, despite being buffered by a complex scheme to maintain plausible deniability.”
“The Biden family business was Joe Biden, period,” Mr. Bobulinski said.
‘Never Talked Business’
President Biden has repeatedly denied knowledge of his son’s business dealings and in August 2023 insisted that he “never talked business” with any of Mr. Biden’s associates.Besides Mr. Bobulinski, other former Biden family business associates—Devon Archer and Rob Walker—have both said that President Biden met with or took part in conference calls with Mr. Hunter Biden’s foreign business partners, undermining the president’s claims of zero involvement or knowledge.
However, both Mr. Archer and Mr. Walker have characterized the elder Biden’s involvement as representative rather than hands-on, which dovetails with Mr. Bobulinski’s comment about maintaining “plausible deniability.”
For instance, Mr. Archer replied in the affirmative when asked during congressional testimony if it was fair to say that “Hunter Biden was selling the illusion of access” to his father, although he was quick to note that it was “almost fair” to say that “because there are touch points and contact points that I can’t deny that happened.”
Mr. Walker also testified that he was present when President Biden dropped by to speak for about 10 minutes, saying that “he spoke nice, you know, normal pleasantries” to a group of people affiliated with the CCP-linked China Energy Co. Ltd. (CEFC) shortly after his term as vice president ended in 2017.
After that meeting, a CEFC-linked entity called State Energy HK Ltd. wired $3 million to Robinson Walker LLC, a company controlled by Mr. Walker, according to his testimony.
Mr. Biden has said that he exercised poor judgment when cashing in on the fame of his last name but denied any wrongdoing in his business dealings.
‘Big Guy’
Not long before the 2020 presidential election, Mr. Bobulinski came forward with a series of explosive disclosures prompted by messages discovered on the younger Biden’s laptop.Among them was correspondence involving Mr. Biden, in which a 10 percent cut from a Chinese business deal would be “held by H for the Big Guy.”
“In that email, there’s no question that ‘H’ stands for Hunter, ‘Big Guy’ for his father, Joe Biden,” Mr. Bobulinski said. “In fact, Hunter often referred to his father as the ‘Big Guy’ or ’my chairman.' On numerous occasions, it was made clear to me that Joe Biden’s involvement was not to be mentioned in writing, but only face to face.”
While Mr. Bobulinski made no mention of the “Big Guy” in his opening statement on Feb. 13, he said that from his personal experience and what he’s learned since his involvement in the Biden family’s business schemes, “it is clear to me that Joe Biden was ’the Brand' being sold by the Biden family.”
IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, who came forward with allegations that the federal tax investigation into Mr. Biden was slow-rolled for political reasons, have also testified that the “Big Guy” was a reference to the president.
In his opening remarks, Mr. Bobulinski brought up the Chinese energy company with whose boss and other affiliates President Biden met with in 2017. He accused CEFC of having “successfully sought to infiltrate and compromise Joe Biden and the Obama–Biden White House.”
He said the process started at the end of 2015 and continued through when the elder Biden left office in 2017 before ending in March 2018, when the CEFC chairman was detained in China on corruption charges, never to be seen again.
“Joe Biden was aware of the CEFC transaction, enabled it, and had a constitutional responsibility and obligation to the American people to shut it down before it began,” Mr. Bobulinski said in his opening remarks.
The Oversight Committee chairman, Mr. Comer, said Mr. Bobulinski was “unshakeable” in his testimony on Feb. 13, “providing facts Democrats didn’t want to hear.”
“As such, Democrats put on a shameful display as they yelled at Mr. Bobulinski, cut him off, belittled him, and threatened him,” Mr. Comer said in a statement.
“We will soon release the transcript to provide the American people with transparency about Joe Biden’s involvement in his family’s shady schemes and Democrats’ efforts to smear Mr. Bobulinski for blowing the whistle.”
