GREATEST HITS, 2019: Biden’s other issues: Ukraine, China, son

FPI / December 22, 2019

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April 3, 2019

While what is being called his inappropriate behavior toward women and young girls is dominating the headlines, Joe Biden also faces major corruption issues involving China, Ukraine and his son Hunter, analysts say.

Peter Schweizer, Government Accountability Institute president and author of bestselling book "Clinton Cash", details in his new book, "Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends", the China scandal involving Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.

Biden, who has yet to announce his candidacy for 2020, is also facing new scrutiny over his past comments and actions in Ukraine, including his boast that he had pressured the country to fire its top prosecutor, who was leading a corruption investigation of a natural gas company that employed Hunter Biden.

In an appearance on Fox News' Hannity, Schweizer told host Sean Hannity: "This is the new corruption, Sean, and it's not the corruption of $90,000 in your freezer. This is major amounts of money (billions). It involves foreign governments who want to influence our leaders, and the way they get around disclosures. The way they get around the law is they don't give the money to the politician, they don't even give it to their spouse – they give it to their kids or they give it to a sibling. And that's a way that it avoids detection. The amounts of money are massive."

Schweizer then got into some specifics related to Biden and his son Hunter: "For example, there are three major deals involving the Chinese government and family members, close aides of the Secretary of State John Kerry and the Vice President Joe Biden. ... Basically, what happens is in 2013, Joe Biden flies to China to talk to them about very sensitive issues, the South China Sea, talking about trade issues, economic issues. Hunter Biden, his son, is with him on Air Force Two. Okay, that’s fine, that’s great. Here’s the problem: Ten days after they come back, after Joe Biden takes a pretty soft position towards the Chinese, Hunter Biden inks ... what becomes a $1.5 billion [private equity] deal."

That was “the first of three deals," Schweizer explained. Along with the two other deals, they're talking about "multiple billion-dollar" deals, none of which had to be disclosed, he said.

"Stuffing tens of thousands of dollars into a freezer has morphed into multibillion-dollar equity deals done in the dark corners of the world," the summary of Schweizer's book reads. "An American bank opening in China would be prohibited by U.S. law from hiring a slew of family members of top Chinese politicians. However, a Chinese bank opening in America can hire anyone it wants. It can even invite the friends and families of American politicians to invest in can’t-lose deals. President Donald Trump’s children have made front pages across the world for their dicey transactions. However, the media has barely looked into questionable deals made by those close to Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Mitch McConnell, and lesser-known politicians who have been in the game longer."

Appearing on Fox News' “The Ingraham Angle” on March 20, Schweizer told host Laura Ingraham it is “crystal clear” that China was “buying off” Joe Biden, a potential 2020 presidential candidate, through his son.

“In December of 2013, Hunter Biden flies on Air Force 2 to Beijing, China, with his father. His father meets with Chinese officials, he’s very soft on Beijing. The most important thing that happens happens 10 days after they return. And that’s when Hunter Biden’s small, private equity firm called Rosemont Seneca Partners gets a $1 billion private equity deal with the Chinese government, not with the Chinese corporation, with the government. And what people need to realize is Hunter Biden has no background in China, he has no background in private equity, the deal he got in the Shanghai free-trade zone, nobody else had. Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Blackstone, nobody had this deal.”

He continued, “[I]t’s very, very clear and that’s the first of a series of deals that Hunter Biden strikes with the Chinese government, so there’s no question, when you chart what Joe Biden is doing with China, the meetings he’s having, and the deals that his sign is procuring at the same time, that they are buying off Biden through his son. I think it’s crystal clear.”

Schweizer added that “this is the tip of the iceberg” of what was “going on while Joe Biden is vice president steering foreign policy.”

Biden's role in the firing of Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin in 2016 could prove to be a major issue for the former vice president.

Last year, during a Council on Foreign Relations event, Biden told the audience that he pressed President Petro Poroshenko to fire Shokin, including threatening to withdraw a $1 billion U.S. loan from Ukraine, which had been economically decimated due to its war with Russian forces since 2014.

“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’ ” Biden said he told Poroshenko.

“Well, son of a b----, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time,” Biden added.

Shokin had been working on a corruption probe that implicated the natural gas firm Burisma Holdings, a company that employed Hunter Biden, as a board member, The Hill reported.

Shokin told The Hill that he had made “specific plans” for the probe, including “interrogations and other crime-investigation procedures into all members of the executive board, including Hunter Biden.”

The investigation ended shortly after Shokin was fired, and no charges were filed against any individuals of the company.

But according to the Hill, General Prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko reopened the case in 2018 following Biden’s remarks at the event, with the prosecutor saying that the evidence in the case may be of interest to U.S. authorities.

“Unfortunately, Mr. Biden had correlated and connected this aid with some of the HR (personnel) issues and changes in the prosecutor’s office,” Lutsenko told the Hill.

Still, the #MeToo moment for Biden is getting the most attention, and it may also be what derails his shot at the presidency, Washington Times columnist Cheryl K. Chumley noted:

“With Biden, there are too many photos. And videos. And of little girls, not just women,” Chumley wrote.

“As White House counselor Kellyanne Conway put it in a recent interview on Fox News: 'If anybody just types in ‘Creepy Uncle Joe’ videos [on the Internet], you come up with a treasure trove.' ”

“Creepy Uncle Joe” is not a nickname “he could shed in time to run for the White House,” Chumley wrote. “That’s not a reputation he could clean or clear in time to become a viable Democratic candidate for the high White House office. If Biden truly wants to help the Democrats, he ought to just stay home. Of course, there are scores of Republicans out there who may disagree.”

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