ANALYSIS: House Investigators Zero In on Biden Deals With Chinese, Romanian Players as White House Decries ‘Baseless Claims’

House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) (C) and other Republican members of the committee hold a news conference to present preliminary findings into their investigation into President Joe Biden's family on May 10, 2023, in Washington. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer is “floating evidence-free innuendo, and making absurd attacks on the president and his family to try to score political points,” according to Ian Sams, the designated White House spokesman in the growing scandal on the millions of dollars flowing from foreign entities to President Joe Biden and nearly a dozen members of his family since 2008.

In a statement emailed to journalists by the White House more than two hours before the Kentucky Republican’s May 10 news conference, Sams argued that Comer was continuing a “long pattern of making absurd claims that President Biden has made governing decisions not in the interest of America, but of the Chinese Communist Party, using baseless claims, personal attacks, and innuendo to try to score political points.

“Oddly, he has been promising—then failing to deliver—this press conference for weeks, raising questions about his shoot-first, figure-it-out-later approach to what is clearly an evidence-free, politically-motivated ‘investigation.’”

Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, at the White House on April 18, 2022. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

The White House heading on the Sams statement declared that “James Comer’s Absurd Innuendo Ignores Reality.”

But in fact the 36-page, single-spaced, deeply footnoted memorandum made public by Comer is based on dozens of government documents, personal emails, corporate bank records and highly detailed accounts of the wheeling and dealing that enabled Joe Biden to become a multi-millionaire while working on the federal payroll in Congress and the White House.

A Blizzard of Facts

The Comer memorandum focuses in particular on business deals with foreign entities in Romania and China, noting a May 21, 2014, speech by then Vice President Joe Biden to Romania’s prime minister, judges, prosecutors and legislative leaders.

“Corruption is a cancer, a cancer that eats away at a citizen’s faith in democracy, diminishes the instinct for innovation and creativity; already-tight national budgets, crowding out important national investments.

“It wastes the talent of entire generations. It scares away investments and jobs. And most importantly it denies the people their dignity.

“It saps the collective strength and resolve of a nation. Corruption is just another form of tyranny,” Joe Biden told the Romanians.

In September 2014, Joe Biden met in the White House with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, who told reporters the vice president “voiced satisfaction over Romania’s progress with the fight against corruption.”

At the same time, according to the memorandum, Biden associates were doing lucrative deals with Romanian entrepreneur Gabriel Popoviciu even as he was at the center of “one of the most high-profile corruption prosecutions” in that country.

“Within five weeks of this meeting [with Iohannis], Bladon Enterprises Limited began making deposits into Robinson Walker LLC’s bank account. Bladon Enterprises is reported to be Gabriel Popoviciu’s Cypriot company that he has used to conduct business in Romania,” the memorandum said.

The deposits totaled in excess of $3 million. Rob Walker is a long-time business partner of Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.

Biden’s Romanian Benefactors

“Biden family accounts received approximately $1.038 million from the Robinson Walker LLC account after Bladon Enterprises deposits. Sixteen of the seventeen payments from Bladon Enterprises to Robinson Walker LLC were made while Joe Biden was vice president,” the memorandum said.

Among the recipients of the Bladon Enterprise money were Hunter Biden, Hallie Biden and what the memorandum described as “an unknown Biden account.” Hallie Biden is the wife of Beau Biden, Joe Biden’s oldest son, who was Attorney General of Delaware when he died of cancer in 2015.

“The [oversight and accountability] committee is further concerned that while Vice President Biden advocated publicly for anti-corruption measures in Romania, bank records show Biden family members and business associates were simultaneously reaping in significant amounts of money from a Romanian individual at the center of a Romanian corruption scandal,” the memorandum said.

Chinese Communist Party’s leader Xi Jinping (2L) attends a meeting with Gabon's President Ali Bongo Ondimba at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on April 19, 2023. Ken  Ishii/AFP via Getty Images

Copies of five of the Bladon Enterprises wire transfers to Robinson Walker LLC are reproduced in the memorandum, which also includes three detailed charts showing the dates, originating account, beneficiary account, and amounts involved in the 17 total transfers.

Regarding Biden links with Chinese entities, the memorandum focused on the $3 million deal that resulted in payments originating with State Energy HK to Biden family members in March 2017, as well as two Chinese individuals, “Ye Jianming and Gongwen Dong—as context for the committee’s concerns about this particular Chinese business venture’s potential threats to American national security.”

The memorandum cited emails it obtained that showed Hunter Biden formed a partnership with Ye through the Bidens’ CEFC Infrastructure Investment (US) LLC.

Ye ran CEFC (China) and was previously deputy secretary general of the China Association for International Friendly Contact (CAIFC), which the Financial Times described as “an international outreach arm for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)” and, according to a U.S. government commission, “a platform for deploying undercover intelligence gatherers.”

$44 Billion Empire

Ye’s business empire was valued at an estimated $44 billion by the mid-2010s, according to sources cited by the memorandum, and was working with the Chinese government’s Belt and Road Initiative used by Beijing to serve its national interests and extend its influence worldwide.

The memorandum cited a CNN report that the world-traveling Ye and his company were aligned so “closely with the Chinese government that it was often hard to distinguish between the two.”

But Ye apparently fell out of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s graces in 2018 and his current whereabouts are unknown.

“The committee is investigating the corrupt conduct of Ye—and others with ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—who used CEFC and Chinese companies to entice Biden family members with millions of dollars in exchange for influence and legitimacy in the United States and abroad,” the memorandum stated.

Dong was Ye’s chief representative in the United States. He purchased a $50.15 million home in New York City’s Central Park in 2017 and a Park Avenue apartment valued at $33 million.

Bank Records Show Transfers

“Bank records indicate Ye Jianming transferred over $130 million to entities controlled by Dong from June through August 2017 alone,” the memorandum said.

“In August 2017 [approximately two months after the first Ye transfer to Dong], Dong and Hunter Biden [through Owasco P.C.] established a company—Hudson West III LLC.

Dong and Hunter Biden were each 50 percent owners of Hudson West III.

Bank records show between Aug. 2–Aug. 17 and October 2018, Hudson West III sent more than $4 million to Hunter Biden-related companies and more than $75,000 to James Biden-related companies.

James Biden is one of the president’s brothers.

When Ye Jianming was detained in 2018, Hunter Biden claimed in an email the memorandum claimed was verified by the Washington Post that “I am not in a [joint venture] with CEFC. I am not partners with CEFC. I am not employed nor funded by CEFC.”

Of Hunter Biden’s disavowal of his relationship with Ye and CEFC, the memorandum observed: “This statement was false ... the committee has obtained a $100,000 wire directly from one of CEFC’s subsidiaries to Hunter Biden’s professional corporation in August 2017.

“As the committee shows, Hunter Biden [and other Biden family members] were in fact ‘funded’ by CEFC [and other foreign sources].”