In a new report the British newspaper The Daily Mail reports its analysis of Joe Biden’s tax returns and filings with the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) has turned up $5.2 million in “unexplained” income.
The Daily Mail, the British daily “middle-market” news organization that received a copy of the contents of Hunter Biden’s infamous abandoned laptop from Jack Maxey, has just reported that it has performed an investigation into President Biden’s financial records and found $5.2 million in “unexplained” income. The Mail reports “The revelation ties the president even closer to Hunter’s overseas business dealings – and makes his previous claims that he never discussed them with his son, even less plausible.”
According to The Mail, while in office between 2017 and 2019 Joe and his wife Jill reported $16.5 million gross income on their federal tax returns (which can be found in full here), including: $11 million of adjusted gross income for 2017, $4.6 million for 2018, and $985,233 for 2019. The Mail notes “the vast majority” of the money came from the couple’s two personal companies: CelticCapri Corp and Giacoppa Corp, which Joe and Jill use for writing and speaking engagements.
The British news organization notes, however, that in a filing with the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) for the same period, President Biden only reported $9.6 million in gross income for himself and his wife.
The Mail says “Some of the remaining roughly $7 million came from wages earned by the First Lady,” including income from her teaching job at the Northern Virginia Community College and the salary she paid herself via Giacoppa. But a comparison of the income Joe reported from his CelticCapri corporation to the IRS and the income he reported to the OGE shows a difference “of almost $5.2 million which remains unaccounted for.”
As for where that $5.2 million could’ve come from? The Mail says Biden’s “alleged links to Hunter’s Chinese ventures raise troubling questions” and that a possible source for (some or all) of the income could’ve been a 10% equity stake Joe likely had in a joint venture spearheaded by his son with the Chinese energy corporation, CEFC.
Indeed, in an email to Hunter in May, 2017 from one of his business partners, James Gilliar, Gilliar outlines a “provisional agreement” for how the equity in a new holding company—Hudson West—would be divided up; with 80% of the “equity,” or shares in the new company, being split equally among four people, including: “H,” (Hunter Biden); “RW” (Rob Walker a “long-time business associate” of Hunter’s); “JG” (James Gilliar, at the international consulting firm J2cR); “TB” (Tony Bobulinksi, a former “business associate” of Hunter’s who now says Joe Biden has known about his son taking payments from Chinese and Ukrainian companies), and then 10% for “Jim” as well as “10[%] held by H for the big guy?” The New York Post, which published the email, notes “Neither Jim nor the ‘big guy’ was identified further,” although it is easy to speculate: “the big guy” is likely Joe Biden, and Jim, likely Joe Biden’s brother, Jim.
The Mail notes that Bobulinski has claimed that the message meant Hunter would secretly hold the shares for his father, who was involved in the deal, and that “Several other emails on Hunter’s laptop refer to Joe as ‘the big guy.'” Although The Mail notes “No conclusive evidence has yet emerged that Joe profited from any of Hunter’s business deals.”
While only speculation as to the source of the $5.2 million is possible at this point, a September 2020 report by Senators Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley noted that in August of 2017, CEFC Infrastructure Investment wired $5 million to the Hudson West bank account. The funds, which originated from a loan issued from the account of a company called Northern International Capital Holdings, a Hong Kong-based investment company and shareholder in CEFC, left the Hudson West account over the next year or so, being sent—almost in full ($4,790,375.25 of the original $5 million)—to Hunter Biden’s firm Owasco for “consulting fees.”
The Mail also says that one of CEFC’s executives, Patrick Ho, also paid Hunter $1 million as a retainer to represent him in a case brought by the Department of Justice for bribery. (Hunter is an attorney.) The Mail adds there’s audio recordings on Hunter’s laptop that evince the President’s son referring to Ho as the “fucking spy chief of China.” Ho does “appear to have ties to Chinese intelligence agencies,” The Mail says, although Hunter’s claim that Ho is a senior Chinese intelligence officer “has not been proven.”
Going in the other direction—directly linking money going from Joe to Hunter—The Mail says it has evidence (in the form of an email from Hunter’s assistant, Katie Dodge), that Joe agreed to pay legal fees and tax bills for his son totaling $737,130.61. More than $116,000 of that went toward “restructuring” fees for Hunter’s joint venture with the government controlled Bank of China, Bohai Harvest RST. Bohai Harvest doesn’t appear to have an official webpage, although Bloomberg refers to it as a private equity company that “runs cross border merging, cross border acquisitions, investment transactions, and other businesses.”
In 2019 President Biden said that “No one in my family will have an office in the White House, will sit in on meetings as if they’re a Cabinet member, will in fact have any business relationship with anyone that relates to a foreign corporation or a foreign country. Period. Period. End of story.”
Feature image: Pete Souza
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