President Donald Trump (2nd-R) with Vice President Mike Pence (L) as former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden (R) look on Trump's inauguration ceremonies at the US Capitol in Washington, on Jan. 20, 2017. Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images
The U.S. Senate should call on Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, to testify and answer questions about his business dealings in China and Ukraine, a government watchdog president said.
Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute, said that the son of the Democratic presidential frontrunner should be called in to testify before a Congressional committee.
“I think it is not unreasonable at all for the Senate to ask Hunter Biden to come in and testify," Schweizer said during an interview with Breitbart. “Why did you get a billion-dollar-plus deal with the Chinese government—a kind of deal that Goldman Sachs and nobody else got—even though he had no background in private equity and no background in China? These are very simple and basic questions that need to be asked.”
“The Chinese are not going to toss around deals that size without expecting something in return,” he added. “Especially if somebody that’s not qualified to get that deal, and a Ukrainian oligarch is not going to spend what according to bank record was $3.1 million into this account over a 14-month period for nothing. They’re expecting something in return, and that’s what Hunter Biden needs to be asked by a Senate committee to explain.”
Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden speaks outside of Gianni's Pizza, in Wilmington Del., on April 25, 2019. Jessica Griffin/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP
The timing of the deals were suspicious, Schweizer noted, adding that if President Donald Trump’s children did the same thing, they'd be vilified.
“We need to have consistency. If it is unacceptable, as I believe it is, for the Trump family to do large foreign deals—especially with foreign governments—while Donald Trump is in the White House, it is absolutely inappropriate for Hunter Biden to do the same thing, especially on top of the fact that he was never in these businesses until his father became vice president of the United States,” he said.
The call for Hunter Biden to appear and answer questions from Senators came after recently released evidence suggested Joe Biden, when serving as vice president, used his influence to force the creation of an anti-corruption agency in Ukraine which later leaked information about a Trump campaign official to create the false narrative that Russia and Trump colluded to win the 2016 presidential election.
Hunter Biden’s dealings with China were publicly noted on the website of his investment company, Bohai Harvest RST, before a report revealed the firm had invested in a facial recognition application that helps the communist government there track dissidents en masse.
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden waves as he walks out of Air Force Two with his granddaughter Finnegan Biden (C) and son Hunter Biden (R) at the airport Dec. 4, 2013, in Beijing, China. Photo by Ng Han Guan-Pool/Getty Images
Hunter Biden was also paid more than $3 million while serving on the board of Burisma Holdings starting in 2014, Schweizer wrote in his book “Secret Empires.”
Burisma was being investigated by Ukraine for allegations that its chairman improperly used his position as minister of environment to award Burisma key permits. Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, recently said he was planning to travel to Ukraine to push leaders there to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden and the origins of the probe into alleged collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia. Giuliani later canceled the trip.
Joe Biden made repeated trips to the country during the probe into his son and boasted last year that he was successful in getting Ukranian President Petro Poroshenko to fire the prosecutor in charge of the investigation.
“And I went over, I guess, the 12th, 13th time to Kiev. And I was supposed to announce that there was another billion-dollar loan guarantee,” Biden said in 2018. When Poroshenko refused to fire the prosecutor, Biden warned that he had been given authority by President Barack Obama to pull the loan guarantee.
“I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ … He got fired.”
Attorney General William Barr returns to a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing entitled "The Justice Department's Investigation of Russian Interference with the 2016 Presidential Election." on Capitol Hill on May 1, 2019. Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters
The probe was revisited recently, General Prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko told The Hill. He said he'd gathered evidence that members of the Burisma board obtained funds for “consulting services” and Joe Biden’s intervention in the probe, saying that he planned to present what he found to U.S. Attorney General William Barr.
Lutsenko told Bloomberg this week that he was not investigating Hunter Biden or Burisma but confirmed that he “was planning to offer details to U.S. Attorney General William Barr about Burisma board payments so American authorities could check whether Hunter Biden paid U.S. taxes on the income.”
“Hunter Biden did not violate any Ukrainian laws—at least as of now, we do not see any wrongdoing. A company can pay however much it wants to its board,” Lutsenko said.
Biden has dismissed concerns about his son’s connection to his work, telling the Associated Press: “We never once discussed it when he was there.”
“There’s not a single bit of evidence that’s been shown in any reporting that’s been done that he ever talked about it with me or asked any government official for a favor,“ he said. ”I have great confidence in my son. He’s a man of great integrity.”
