“Hunter Biden suggested setting up a shell company to do business with a Chinese firm in order to avoid registering as a foreign agent, and to be able to bid on contracts with the U.S. government, according to documents from May 2017 obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
A day after sending the message, Biden arranged a meeting between his father, Joe Biden, and Tony Bobulinski, one of the prospective partners in a deal with CEFC China Energy, a Chinese conglomerate whose chairman had links to the communist regime in Beijing.
“We don’t want to have to register as foreign agents under the FCPA which is much more expansive than people who should know choose not to know,” Hunter Biden wrote to Bobulinski on May 1, 2017, according to a message obtained by the DCNF.
“No matter what it will need to be a US company at some level in order for us to make bids on federal and state funded projects.”
Biden appeared to be referring to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) as well as the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
Biden did not explain in the messages why he thought the venture with CEFC would violate FARA or FCPA without the buffer of a U.S. shell company.
On May 2, 2017, a day after the text message, Hunter Biden arranged a meeting between Bobulinski, James Biden and Joe Biden in Los Angeles.
Bobulinski said at a press conference on Thursday that the meeting lasted an hour. He also said that the meeting undercut Joe Biden’s past claims to have never discussed business with his son.
“That is false,” Bobulinski said of Joe Biden’s previous statements.
“I have firsthand knowledge about this because I directly dealt with the Biden family, including Joe Biden.”
Bobulinski said that during the May 2017 meeting, he and the Bidens discussed “the Biden’s family business plans with the Chinese.”
He said that Joe Biden was “plainly familiar” with those plans “at a high level.”
Text messages preserved by Bobulinski show him discussing the meeting with Hunter and James Biden.
Bobulinski has provided emails, text messages and business records related to the CEFC deal to the Senate Homeland Security Committee. He also met Friday with the FBI, according to Sen. Ron Johnson, who chairs the committee.
The DCNF has also obtained Bobulinski’s trove of records.