Patrick Ho (Credit: public domain)
“Federal investigators obtained a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant against one of Hunter Biden’s Chinese business associates, suggesting that the executive was suspected of acting as a covert agent of a foreign government.
Prosecutors revealed the existence of at least one FISA warrant against Chi Ping Patrick Ho, known as Patrick Ho, in a Feb. 8, 2018 court filing obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Ho was charged on Dec. 18, 2017 with conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and money laundering related to CEFC China Energy contracts in Uganda and Chad. Ho had been an executive at the multi-billion dollar Chinese energy company prior to his arrest.
Hunter Biden was part of a business consortium that sought a partnership with CEFC in May 2017. A Senate report released last month said that an affiliate of CEFC wired $5 million to Biden’s law firm from August 2017 through August 2018.
In addition to his partnership with CEFC, Hunter Biden also represented Ho during his legal battle.
On Aug. 2, 2017, Hunter Biden signed a formal consulting deal with Ye Jianming, boss of the Chinese energy company CEFC. (Credit: NYP)
According to a report from The New Yorker last year, CEFC’s chairman, Ye Jianming, raised concerns with Biden in summer 2017 about a possible investigation into Ho.
Biden agreed to represent Ho and to find out the extent of the investigation, according to The New Yorker report.
The New York Times reported in December 2018 that Ho’s first call following his arrest the year before was to James Biden, the brother of the former vice president.
The Senate report also said that a shell company affiliated with CEFC called Hudson West III wired $1 million to Biden’s law firm, Owasco, on March 22, 2018.
The payment was designated for “Dr Patrick Ho Chi Ping Representation,” the report says.”
The Republican senators who released the report asserted that Biden’s relationship with CEFC posed counterintelligence concerns, in part due to Ye’s links to the People’s Liberation Army and the Chinese Communist Party.
The court filings in Ho’s case suggest that federal investigators had counterintelligence concerns about Ho.
Investigators obtained a FISA warrant allowing them to conduct electronic and physical surveillance of Ho’s property, court documents show.
“The United States intends to offer into evidence, or otherwise use or disclose in any proceedings in the above-captioned matter, information obtained or derived from electronic surveillance and physical search conducted pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,” prosecutors said in the Feb. 8, 2018 court filing.
Ho’s lawyers tried to block evidence obtained through the FISA process from being used at Ho’s trial, according to one filing submitted in his case.
Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, where the case was tried, responded in a court filing of their own defending the use of evidence from the FISA in Ho’s case. They did not disclose the basis for obtaining the FISA warrant or say when it was granted.
The court filing also says that the evidence derived from the FISAs was classified.
Ho was convicted in March 2019 and sentenced to three years in prison.
On Tuesday, the National Pulse website published an audio recording purportedly from Hunter Biden’s laptop in which he referred to Ho as a “spy chief.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 10/27/2020) (Archive)
Natalie Winters/National Pulse, 10/27/2020
Hunter Biden Audio Confesses Partnership With China ‘Spy Chief’… Joe Biden Named as Criminal Case Witness
An audio recording exclusively obtained by the National Pulse reveals Hunter Biden discussing business involvement with a “spy chief of China” and how his business partner Devon Archer named him and his father as witnesses in a Southern District of New York Criminal case.
Hunter Biden – in an audio file labeled “Most Genius Shit Ever” – appears to be referencing Patrick Ho, who was a former Secretary for Home Affairs in Hong Kong, as a “spy chief of China” while lamenting how his business partner Ye Jianming of CEFC China Energy had disappeared.
Ho was also involved in the CEFC venture, as originally reported by the New York Post and suppressed by the media and Big Tech firms.
The audio breaks the mainstream media’s narrative that the hard drive is somehow “fake” or does not implicate Hunter or Joe Biden in criminal investigations and/or business deals with the Chinese Communist Party.