Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute and senior contributor-at-large at Breitbart News, recalled how Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s second son, received millions of dollars from Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings while his father directed $1.8 billion in aid money to Ukraine as vice president during the Obama administration.
Schweizer joined Tuesday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with hosts Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak.
Schweizer said, “I think a deeper problem that [Joe Biden] faces is — as has been reported on Breitbart and reported at the Hill, today — which I think is far deeper is the fact that his family, particularly his son, cashed in while he was vice president of the United States.”
LISTEN:
John Solomon reported on Hunter Biden’s receiving millions of dollars from Burisma Holdings after being installed on the company’s board during his father’s vice presidential tenure:
U.S. banking records show Hunter Biden’s American-based firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, received regular transfers into one of its accounts – usually more than $166,000 a month – from Burisma from spring 2014 through fall 2015, during a period when Vice President Biden was the main U.S. official dealing with Ukraine and its tense relations with Russia.”
The general prosecutor’s official file for the Burisma probe – shared with me by senior Ukrainian officials – shows prosecutors identified Hunter Biden, business partner Devon Archer and their firm, Rosemont Seneca, as potential recipients of money.
Shokin told me in written answers to questions that, before he was fired as general prosecutor, he had made “specific plans” for the investigation that “included interrogations and other crime-investigation procedures into all members of the executive board, including Hunter Biden.”
“We’ve talked before about the deals he procured with the government for China,” remembered Schweizer. “The other place [Joe Biden’s] son, Hunter Biden, procured a big deal was in Ukraine. In Ukraine, it involved an energy company called Burisma, which is a very corrupt organization headed by an oligarch named Mykola Zlochevsky who is very close to ViktorYanukovich, the pro-Russian leader.”
Schweizer asked, “There’s all kinds of questions and implications. Is there a Russian component to this, because Burisma is such a corrupt company?”
“The bottom line is Joe Biden was the Obama administration’s point-person on policy towards Ukraine,” noted Schweizer. “He steered $1.8 billion in aid to that government and while he was doing so, his son got a sweetheart deal with this energy company – that we’ve been able to trace over just a 14-month period – paid $3.1 million into an account where Hunter Biden was getting paid.”
Schweizer highlighted Hunter Biden’s lack of professional or experiential bona fides in terms of his board position at Burisma Holdings.
“Suffice to say, Hunter Biden has no background in Ukraine,” stated Schweizer. “He has no background in energy policy. There’s really no legitimate explanation as to why he got this deal with this energy company, other than the fact his father was responsible for doling out money in Ukraine itself.”
Schweizer went on, “It’s a huge problem, and it goes to this question of corruption and potential payoffs and bribes that these foreign entities were making to the Bidens in exchange for hopefully getting favorable treatment.”
Despite the Robert Mueller-led operation’s ostensible pursuit of “collusion” between President Donald Trump and the Russian state, Schweizer noted actual financial dealings between the Biden family and foreign interests.
Schweizer said, “One of the phrases that has been tossed around as it relates to the Russian collusion hoax was ‘obstruction of justice’ by Trump, and there’s been no — at least in my mind — evidence that that ever happened, and it doesn’t seem that Mueller felt any charges should be brought on that count. But in this case, you would have a pretty clear-cut case of obstruction of justice, where Joe Biden is saying to Ukrainian officials, ‘We are not going to give you this billion-dollar loan guarantee unless you fire this guy.'”
Schweizer added, “There is far more evidence of collusion involving Joe Biden — or even involving the Clintons — of collusion with these foreign powers than there was with Donald Trump, because you actually have the transaction of money, you have very favorable policies that were carried out. I think ‘collusion’ is not too strong a word. I think it’s a pretty accurate word.”
Schweizer added, “There’s no question. The Bidens got a lot of money — millions of dollars — from these foreign powers. Hunter Biden had no legitimate reasons to get the deal. He simply wasn’t qualified.”
Schweizer warned of politicians and officials monetizing their political influence.
“So what [Joe Biden] is doing is using U.S. taxpayer government resources for the personal benefit of his family, and by the way, all of this absolutely rings true,” remarked Schweizer. “Joe Biden was the Obama administration’s person on Ukraine, he traveled to that country something like 17 times during his tenure as vice president, which is pretty amazing.”
Schweizer went on, “What’s remarkable is when, a couple of days before Donald Trump was inaugurated in Washington, D.C., Joe Biden was actually in Ukraine. It’s pretty remarkable for a vice president of the United States to be overseas that late in the game, but he was in Ukraine. [Joe Biden’s] sway and influence there was enormous, and it raises all kinds of questions about the way that he used or abused government power, and of course it raises questions about what potentially did Ukrainians have on Hunter Biden.”
“What kind of evidence and information do we have?” asked Schweizer of corruption concerns regarding Joe Biden. “We know that millions of dollars flowed into Hunter Biden’s accounts. We know that he was not qualified for the job, and the question is, what did he get for Ukrainians in return? I think that’s all the sort of thing that needs to be investigated and looked into by a grand jury.”
Schweizer added, “You have a pattern with Hunter Biden. Of a couple of cases that we know of and others that are lingering out there. We know in the case of China he flies with his dad on Air Force Two in December of 2013 and ten days later, his firm gets a $1 billion private equity deal with the Chinese government.”
Schweizer continued, “Again, [Hunter Biden’s] firm has no background in China. Hunter Biden has no background in China. It’s just odd. About four months later, he gets this deal with the Ukrainians, particularly with Burisma. What we also know is, based on financial account records that came out [from] Morgan Stanley that was managed by Hunter Biden’s business partner, a guy named Devon Archer, he handled an account for Morgan Stanley and that account sent huge sums of money to Hunter Biden.”
Schweizer went on, “Not only does that account show money coming in from the Chinese and Ukrainians. There’s also $1.2 million that comes from this LLC that we can’t trace. it comes from a boutique Swiss bank account that’s been implicated in money-laundering in ten countries. There’s $145,000 from the son of the former prime minister of Kazakhstan, which is of course a highly corrupt country with all sorts of interesting implications. The point is, Ukraine is not an isolated case. China is not an isolated case.”
Joe Biden seems to have monetized his vice presidential powers, speculated Schweizer.
Schweizer stated, “It’s pretty clear you have a pattern that the for-sale sign was open with the Biden family, and that a lot of foreign powers — including foreign governments — basically took them up on the offer and gave money to Hunter Biden. That, in and of itself, I think demands investigation in the United States.”
“These financial records by Morgan Stanley [are] very, very clear,” declared Schweizer. “It shows line after line after line of money going into an account that is marked ‘Robert H. Biden,’ which is Hunter Biden’s legal name, and it shows huge sums of money coming in from Ukrainians, Chinese, Kazakhs, and anonymous LLCs. It’s all there in black and white.”
Hunter Biden sat on the board of Bohai Harvest RST — an obscure private equity firm — which secured a $1.5 billion investment from the Chinese government, noted Schweizer.
“The deal with China that he had was the first financial deal with the Chinese government that allowed moving assets to the Shanghai Free Trade Zone. So, J.P. Morgan didn’t have this kind of deal, Goldman Sachs didn’t have this kind of deal, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, the only firm that had this deal was this small boutique firm that had been started a couple of years ago by the vice president’s son.”
In March 2018, an aide of Joe Biden’s dismissed Schweizer’s investigations and research given Schweizer’s relationship with Breitbart News: “We aren’t going to engage on a politically motivated hit pieces based on a series of demonstrable, factual errors from a Breitbart-affiliated author and his financial backers.”
Schweizer said, “So he can huff and puff and attack me personally all he wants. In part, he attacked me because of my role as an editor at Breitbart, but that doesn’t erase the facts.”
On March 12, Joe Biden said he could not “think of any reason” he would not run for president. In December 2018, he said “anybody can beat” Donald Trump in 2020’s forthcoming presidential election.
Breitbart News Tonight broadcasts live on SiriusXM Patriot channel 125 weeknights from 9:00 p.m. to midnight Eastern or 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Pacific.
Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter @rkraychik.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.