Democrat frontrunner and former Vice President Joe Biden (D) refused to answer questions about the deal Hunter Biden’s private equity firm and the Chinese government made, instead promising to address potential conflicts of interest on his first day in office, ABC News reported.
Throughout the week, Biden has refused to answer questions about his son’s foreign business dealings – securing $1.5 billion in investment from China particularly – which seemingly coincided with the former vice president’s “diplomatic work.” The issue popped up on the campaign trail a number of times this week, but Biden refused to elaborate. His staffers reportedly “blocked reporters” who approached him.
“At two separate campaign stops on Monday, Biden avoided questions about his son while his staff blocked reporters from approaching the candidate,” according to ABC News.
Instead of answering questions, Biden’s campaign sent ABC News a vague statement, detailing Biden’s supposed devotion to adhering to “executive branch ethics standards.” It added that Biden will issue an executive order on day one to “address conflicts of interest of any kind.”
Hunter Biden’s former business dealings with Ukraine and China are not new developments, but they bubbled back up after Biden dismissed China’s threat at a May campaign event. He said:
China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man. They can’t even figure out how to deal with the fact that they have this great division between the China Sea and the mountains in the East. I mean in the West. They can’t figure out how they are going to deal with the corruption that exists within the system. I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what: they’re not competition for us.
“While Trump is attacking our friends, China is pressing its advantage all over the world,” he added.
Breitbart News Senior Contributor Peter Schweizer laid out the circumstances of Hunter Biden’s questionable foreign business dealings in great detail in his 2018 book, Secret Empires.
Breitbart News reported:
Schweizer reports that in 2013, Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden’s firm signed a billion-dollar deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China ten days after Joe and Hunter Biden flew to China aboard Air Force Two. The newly formed investment fund was named Bohai Harvest RST (BHR).
Schweizer went into further detail on Breitbart News Tonight last year:
“In December of 2013, Vice President Joe Biden flies to Asia for a trip, and the centerpiece for that trip is a visit to Beijing, China,” said Schweizer. “To put this into context, in 2013, the Chinese have just exerted air rights over the South Pacific, the South China Sea. They basically have said, ‘If you want to fly in this area, you have to get Chinese approval. We are claiming sovereignty over this territory.’ Highly controversial in Japan, in the Philippines, and in other countries. Joe Biden is supposed to be going there to confront the Chinese. Well, he gets widely criticized on that trip for going soft on China. So basically, no challenging them, and Japan and other countries are quite upset about this.”
Elaborating, Schweizer said, “Well, I think the reason he goes soft on China is because with him on that trip, flying on Air Force Two, is his son Hunter Biden, and ten days after they return from China, Hunter Biden — who has this small firm, he has no background in private equity, he has no background in Chinese finance — gets a whopping $1.5 billion deal from the Chinese government. This is the Chinese government giving Joe Biden and a [John] Kerry confidante the management over this money, and they made huge fees off of this money, and it’s an example of this kind of corruption. That’s the first of three major deals that the Chinese government does with people who are either the children — that is the sons — or close aides to Vice President Biden or Secretary of State John Kerry.”
ABC News specifically credited Schweizer for his work on the topic.
Donald Trump Jr. has been a fierce critic of Biden’s shady foreign business dealings and brought them up during a speech at his father’s reelection rally in Orlando Tuesday night.
“Two weeks ago, Joe Biden said, ‘Oh. China. They’re not really a threat.’ Now, I said, ‘Man, that actually rivals and may surpass Obama’s stupidest comment in the history of politics and economics,’” Trump said.
“What do you think would be the media’s reaction if Donald Trump Jr. took $1.50 from the Chinese? Not $1.5 billion like Joe Biden’s son. Just $1.50,” he said.
“They would lose their goddamn minds,” he declared, adding that Biden “doesn’t know what the hell he stands for anymore”:
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