Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said that the evidence from Hunter Biden‘s abandoned laptop indicated that he and his uncle James operated as foreign agents when brokering a 2017 business deal with CEFC, a leading Chinese energy company with ties to the country’s communist government.
During discussions about the CEFC venture, they proposed using their connections to power in order to arrange meetings and solicit support from several high-ranking Democrats as partners in their projects.
“When the available evidence is taken as a whole, it is clear that CEFC intended to make inroads in the United States for the purpose of expanding its business and used Hunter Biden and his business associates to help effectuate that intent,” Grassley wrote in a letter to Attorney General William Barr, encouraging him to pursue charges under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
“In pursuit of its goals, it appears that CEFC may have taken action to influence U.S. policy and public opinion in its favor and gain access to several U.S. politicians in an attempt to curry favor for potential business transactions,” Grassley said.
Although the Bidens continue to deny any impropriety in the scandals involving China, Ukraine and other foreign entities, the DOJ acknowledged that it had been investigating them and their business associates for money laundering since last year.
It is unclear whether the investigation was launched before or after the FBI obtained the original hard drive of Hunter’s laptop, which he left at a Delaware repair shop and never reclaimed.
The data contained not only the corroborating details of business scandals previously disclosed by the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, but also shocking personal details of Hunter’s troubled life.
Among them were hints of sexual impropriety with his dead brother’s daughter including nudes photos of both Hunter and the underage relative.
The revelations about the hard drive caused a minor ripple prior to the Nov. 3 election. However, due to a massive suppression and censorship campaign by corporate media and social-media publishers, its immediate impact on the election remains uncertain.
Trump outperformed polls by a considerable margin, but evidence suggests that was due to widespread polling bias and not any sort of underlying event like the laptop scandal.
Should Biden claim the presidency—as the same left-wing media now projects—and replace Trump’s Justice Department with his own officials, the criminal allegations against his son and brother would likely become moot.
Even if charges were brought, Biden would have the power to commute the sentences or extend a full pardon.
But Grassley’s letter hinted at a different level of score-settling that would, in many ways, mirror the political abuses heaped upon the incoming Trump administration by its corrupt predecessors in the Obama administration.
Unlike with the salacious innuendo that fueled anti-Trump claims of Russian collusion, however, Grassley laid out in his letter the considerable evidence to support the charges of Chinese collusion.
“Based on the information acquired to date, CEFC was controlled by a foreign government, received financial support therefrom, and may have engaged in activity to influence the U.S. Government and public for the benefit of the communist Chinese government,” said Grassley, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee.
“Accordingly, the actions by Hunter Biden and James Biden on behalf of CEFC … potentially make them agents of the Chinese government for purposes of longstanding public disclosure laws,” he said.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller used the charge of failing to register as a foreign agent to go after former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort while investigating the allegations of Russian collusion.
The so-called investigators also considered using it against Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn. The FBI ultimately laid a perjury trap, instead, while Mueller used the FARA threat as leverage in order to coerce Flynn’s cooperation with his probe.
The complex and nuanced FARA rules may be a slippery slope for many international enterprises that fall afoul of the political powers-that-be.
But Biden’s own recent meddling in foreign affairs, while attempting to appear as if he had already secured the presidency, exposed an even greater double-standard.
Former Obama staffer Ben Rhodes acknowledged that Biden already has begun engaging in talks with foreign governments—a violation of the Logan Act.
Ironically, declassified FBI notes indicated that it was Biden who suggested, in a January 2017 meeting, that investigators could use the antiquated act against Flynn, who had engaged a Russian diplomat in late December 2016 while trying to reassure him that Trump would not honor the sanctions imposed by the outgoing Obama administration.
