Two Biden family associates testified to Congress this week about their deep involvement in the family’s foreign business dealings, revealing information in respective closed-door interviews about Hunter Biden‘s foreign engagements and the Bidens’ lack of experience in an industry in which they were doing business, according to lawmakers and sources familiar with the interviews.
The House Oversight and Judiciary Committees conducted the interviews as part of their impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
On Friday, the committees interviewed Rob Walker, who once distributed large sums of money from China and Romania to several Biden family members. They interviewed another associate, Mervyn Yan, on Thursday.
Transcripts of the interviews have not yet been released, but the lawmakers and sources conveyed numerous findings from them.
Walker said that Hunter Biden met in 2015 with the U.S. ambassador to Romania on behalf of Gabriel Popoviciu, a Romanian real estate tycoon whom Hunter Biden was helping with legal troubles at the time, according to one source.
A company controlled by Popoviciu paid Hunter Biden more than $1 million for his work beginning in 2015, when Joe Biden was still vice president, according to bank records obtained by the House Oversight Committee. The money was funneled through a company owned by Walker, the records show.
The revelation comes as questions intensify about why Hunter Biden has never registered as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act for his work abroad with U.S. government officials. The Department of Justice has weighed charging the first son for his failure to register as a foreign lobbyist and may still be continuing to do so.
The source also said Walker provided context for the bank records that showed Walker distributed more than $1 million that he received from a Chinese government-linked energy firm to Hunter Biden, his sister-in-law Hallie Biden, and his uncle James Biden. Walker said he wired the money to Hallie and James Biden at the direction of Hunter Biden, even though the pair never did any work for the energy company, according to the source.
Yan, who was also involved in dealings with Hunter Biden and the Chinese energy ventures, testified that the Bidens had “no experience in the energy and infrastructure sectors,” according to Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY), a remark that comes as the GOP continues to emphasize that Hunter and James Biden offered no clear goods or services to those investing in them.
Comer said Walker revealed that Joe Biden met with a Chinese energy executive as the other Biden family members received payments.
“Today we learned that Joe Biden met with the now-missing Chairman of CEFC, Ye Jianming, as Hunter Biden and his associates received $3 million from a Chinese entity CEFC controlled. Evidence continues to reveal the Bidens sold the ‘Biden Brand’ to enrich the Biden family,” Comer said.
Yan “was not sure what [the Bidens] brought to the table. His testimony raises many questions about the Bidens’ dealings with the Chinese government-linked energy firm,” Comer said.
Another source said both Walker and Yan denied that Joe Biden had any involvement in these business ventures. Republicans have investigated allegations that the president was involved in the business ventures as part of their impeachment probe into whether Joe Biden abused his power for personal profit when he was vice president.
“To be clear, President Biden — while in office or as a private citizen — was never involved in any of the business activities we pursued,” Walker said, according to the source. “Any statement to the contrary is simply false.”
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Oversight ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) issued a lengthy statement after Yan’s testimony, saying the associate said he had no interactions at all with Joe Biden or any awareness of the president knowing about or profiting from his son’s and brother’s business pursuits.
Comer has vowed to release the transcripts of both associates’ interviews as soon as they are available.