Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) slammed the Senate’s investigation of Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings as a “political exercise” in September, saying it was “not the legitimate role of government.” Those criticisms now look shortsighted, as Hunter Biden has admitted that he is under federal investigation.
As Dan Bongino’s website recalled on Friday, Romney was criticizing an effort led by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) of the Senate Committee on Finance, to investigate Hunter Biden’s ties to Burisma, the corrupt Ukrainian energy company.
Hunter Biden took a lavishly-compensated board seat on Burisma in 2014, leading — briefly — to questions from reporters about whether there was a conflict of interests for his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, who was leading U.S. foreign policy on Ukraine. The Obama administration ducked those questions.
Later, in 2018, Joe Biden admitted that he had threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees to Ukraine in March 2016 — while eastern Ukraine was besieged by Russian-backed forces — unless Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin was fired.
In July 2019, President Donald Trump asked newly-elected Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenskyy to look into Burisma and the Bidens’ role. Democrats alleged that Trump had asked for foreign interference in a U.S. election and impeached him.
During the impeachment inquiry, however, Democrats’ own witnesses testified that they were aware of a conflict of interest involving Hunter Biden and Burisma. State Department official George Kent said that he raised the issue with Biden’s office and received no response. Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch testified that she had been briefed about Burisma — and no other company — by Obama administration sfatt in preparation for her Senate confirmation hearings.
Romney had criticized Johnson and Grassley’s investigation as “political” from the outset. But their report on Hunter Biden and Burisma, released in September, revealed: “In October 2015, senior State Department official Amos Hochstein raised concerns with Vice President Biden, as well as with Hunter Biden, that Hunter Biden’s position on Burisma’s board enabled Russian disinformation efforts and risked undermining U.S. policy in Ukraine.” The report also found that Joe Biden had allowed members of his family to enrich themselves abroad while he was serving as Vice President.
A specific detail in that report alerted businessman Tony Bobulinski to the fact that Hunter Biden had apparently diverted $5 million from the CEFC China Energy Co. to accounts that he controlled. Bobulinski would later say that the money was supposed to have been invested in Sinohawk, a new joint venture between CEFC and the Biden family that he was to lead.
When the New York Post broke the story about the CEFC deal, based on emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop, Bobulinski came forward to confirm Hunter Biden’s involvement, and that Joe Biden was the “big guy” who was to have received a 10% stake.
The federal investigation into Hunter Biden reportedly concerns his foreign business deals, including with CEFC, and makes use of evidence from the laptop, which was seized by the FBI in December 2019.
Romney has not retracted his earlier statements.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.