Hunter Biden investigation: Democrats gear up to attack GOP impeachment witness

Democrats are preparing to attack the credibility of a witness who has claimed to have evidence of President Joe Biden’s direct involvement in a Chinese business deal.

Tony Bobulinski is likely to testify at the House Oversight Committee’s next impeachment inquiry hearing about what he learned working with Hunter Biden and his uncle, James Biden, on the Chinese venture.

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But Joe Biden’s allies are likely to paint Bobulinski as a shady former associate driven to speak out by a personal grudge against the Biden family.

Bobulinski’s deep involvement in a Chinese business deal with Hunter Biden and his uncle, James Biden, gave him insight into the way the Biden family conducted business. He has since claimed to have witnessed conversations about including President Joe Biden in the Chinese venture during the years between Joe Biden’s vice presidency and presidency.

Hunter and James Biden appear to have cut Bobulinski out of the deal with CEFC China Energy, the Chinese company with whom the group was looking to partner, after the relationship between Hunter Biden and Bobulinski soured.

Democrats and their allies have cited the collapse of the relationship between Bobulinski and the Biden family, as well as his unrelated business history, as reasons not to trust him. But other sources confirm that Bobulinski was indeed close to one of Hunter Biden’s most controversial business deals, which would have put him in a position to witness key elements of the arrangement.

David Brock, president of a group created to push back on Republican congressional oversight of the Biden administration, and others shared a story last week that highlighted some of Bobulinski’s checkered past. Specifically, the Daily Beast article dug into a lawsuit Bobulinski had filed against his father, at the time suffering from cancer, and his father’s charity.

Bobulinski’s father died during the lawsuit, according to the article, but Bobulinski continued seeking a settlement from his estate.

Eddie Vale, a spokesman for FactsFirstUSA, Brock’s group, said the story highlights why Bobulinski shouldn’t be trusted.

“If it’s a debate between two sides on Bobulinski’s credibility, having his own family accuse him of killing his dad would seem to tilt the scale pretty heavily into the untrustworthy side,” Vale told the Washington Examiner.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, cited Bobulinski’s interactions with former President Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson as evidence that he is not a reliable witness.

Doggett called Bobulinski a “blowhard” and described him as “totally discredited” during a closed-door meeting of the committee in late September, during which members voted to release documents related to the investigation.

Bobulinski appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show last year to detail some of what happened during the Biden family’s involvement with CEFC. During the 2020 race, then-President Trump invited Bobulinski to a presidential debate, and Bobulinski gave a public statement accusing Joe Biden of wrongdoing at the event.

The documents released by the House Ways and Means Committee included an FBI memo summarizing what Bobulinski told the FBI in October 2020 when he walked into the FBI’s Washington field office and asked to file a complaint against the Biden family.

What Bobulinski told the FBI could mirror what he tells the House Oversight Committee in the event he does appear for an impeachment inquiry hearing.

(AP News)

Bobulinski said a business contact named James Gilliar, also a former associate of the Biden family, brought him into the CEFC deal after talks with Hunter and James Biden had already begun. Gilliar suggested the deal would involve the Chinese firm and “one of America’s most prominent families,” Bobulinski recalled.

During a meeting in Miami in early 2017, Bobulinski spoke with Hunter Biden in person for the first time, he said. Hunter Biden, CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming, Biden family associate Rob Walker, and Gilliar attended the Miami meeting alongside Bobulinski. It was at this meeting that Ye gave Hunter Biden a large diamond that, years later, became a focus of investigators.

Bobulinski said Hunter Biden and his uncle, James Biden, had already spent the two years leading up to the Miami meeting working their contacts to bring CEFC business opportunities, and they now wanted to get paid. CEFC had not paid the two previously because Joe Biden was still in office, Bobulinski claimed, and accepting money from the Chinese government-linked company was considered too risky for the vice president’s son and brother.

The group then established an investment entity that CEFC and the business partners would form as a joint venture, Bobulinski said. CEFC would own 50% of the joint venture, and Gilliar, Walker, Hunter Biden, James Biden, and Joe Biden would split ownership of the remaining 50%.

Emails found on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop corroborate that such an ownership structure was discussed at the time.

Bobulinski signed on to become the joint venture’s CEO with a yearly salary of $850,000, but he would receive no equity under the arrangement.

The plan was for CEFC to put $10 million into the joint venture, which was to be called SinoHawk. Half of that money was intended to come in as a forgivable loan to the holding companies that held the Biden family and associates’ half of the SinoHawk equity.

Bobulinski said he met Joe Biden in person in May 2017 in California and told FBI agents the two discussed SinoHawk business. Later, James Biden told Bobulinski that Joe Biden was able to participate in business deals like the Chinese one because he always maintained “plausible deniability” by never getting himself too deeply involved; Bobulinski also said Hunter and James Biden instructed him not to use Joe Biden’s name in written communications about the deal.

But although the funds from CEFC were supposed to arrive in SinoHawk’s accounts by June 2017, months passed without money changing hands, Bobulinski told the FBI.

Bobulinski pressed Hunter Biden about why the money was delayed, and Hunter Biden gave him no satisfactory answers.

In late 2017, a top CEFC lieutenant named Patrick Ho was arrested in the United States on corruption charges, and by early 2018, Ye had disappeared inside China, leading Bobulinski to believe the SinoHawk venture was dead.

Years later, Bobulinski learned from a Senate Homeland Security report that Hunter Biden had actually received more than millions of dollars from CEFC during the time they were all doing business together. Bobulinski, it appeared, had been secretly cut from the deal.

Walker corroborated Bobulinski’s involvement when he spoke to the FBI in December 2020.

A close Biden family associate for years, Walker confirmed the discussions with CEFC involved sharing ownership in a joint venture.

“We were negotiating with CEFC to start a partnership to be fifty percent owners in an infrastructure company,” he told the FBI.

Walker said the group decided to bring in Bobulinski because Hunter Biden “was a little bit up and down at the time mentally,” likely because of Hunter Biden’s struggles with substance abuse. Bobulinski was supposed to “keep Hunter in line,” Walker told the FBI.

Instead, the two bitterly clashed. Walker described Bobulinski as “a bully and an a**hole” but not as a liar.

Walker said he walked away from the CEFC joint venture when he learned that Hunter Biden intended to have the money sent directly to him rather than to the SinoHawk entity that the group had created together.

“Even though I do not like Tony at all, I wasn’t going to, you know, cheat him out of anything,” Walker said.

WhatsApp messages provided to Congress from two IRS whistleblowers appear to show Hunter Biden pressuring CEFC executives to send money directly to him based on conversations he’d had with Ye, CEFC’s chairman.

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In one message from July 2017, Hunter Biden claimed his father was sitting next to him and that the two Biden men wanted to know why the money had not already arrived.

The House Oversight Committee did not respond to a request for comment about plans to feature Bobulinski at a hearing.