Within a year, it would all begin to collapse.
While many aspects of Hunter Biden’s financial arrangement with CEFC China Energy have been previously reported and were included in a Republican-led Senate report from 2020, a Washington Post review confirmed many of the key details and found additional documents showing Biden family interactions with Chinese executives.
Over the course of 14 months, the Chinese energy conglomerate and its executives paid $4.8 million to entities controlled by Hunter Biden and his uncle, according to government records, court documents and newly disclosed bank statements, as well as emails contained on a copy of a laptop hard drive that purportedly once belonged to Hunter Biden.
The Post did not find evidence that Joe Biden personally benefited from or knew details about the transactions with CEFC, which took place after he had left the vice presidency and before he announced his intentions to run for the White House in 2020.
But the new documents — which include a signed copy of a $1 million legal retainer, emails related to the wire transfers, and $3.8 million in consulting fees that are confirmed in new bank records and agreements signed by Hunter Biden — illustrate the ways in which his family profited from relationships built over Joe Biden’s decades in public service.
Hunter Biden’s overseas work has been the subject of heightened scrutiny. He has been under federal investigation as part of an inquiry into his taxes, with witnesses called before a grand jury as recently as last month. Federal prosecutors had been attempting to determine if he failed to account for income from China-related deals, The Post has previously reported, although it is unclear whether that is still a focus. Republicans, meanwhile, have pointed to the Biden family’s business deals in China, along with Hunter Biden’s past membership on the board of the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, as potential conflicts of interest.
The CEFC deal became one of the most lucrative, if short-lived, foreign ventures Hunter Biden is known to have pursued. The Post review draws in part on an analysis of a copy said to be of the hard drive of a laptop computer that Hunter Biden purportedly dropped off at a Delaware repair shop and never came to collect. The laptop was turned over to the FBI in December 2019, according to documents reviewed by The Post, and a copy of the drive was obtained by Rudy Giuliani and other advisers to then-President Donald Trump a few months before the 2020 election.
After the New York Post began publishing reports on the contents of the laptop in October 2020, The Washington Post repeatedly asked Giuliani and Republican strategist Stephen K. Bannon for a copy of the data to review before the election, but the requests were rebuffed or ignored.
In June 2021, a copy was provided to The Post by Jack Maxey, an activist who received a copy from Giuliani in 2020, at a time when Maxey was working with Bannon and his “War Room” podcast.
The Post has explored the chain of custody, as well as the findings of forensic analyses of the data, in a separate story.
Biden aides and some former U.S. intelligence officials have voiced concern that the device may have been manipulated by Russia to interfere in the campaign. On Capitol Hill, Democrats have dismissed earlier reports about Hunter Biden’s work in China as lacking credibility or being part of a Russian disinformation campaign. The Post analysis included forensic work by two outside experts who assessed the authenticity of numerous emails related to the CEFC matter. In addition, The Post found that financial documents on the copy of Hunter Biden’s purported laptop match documents and information found in other records, including newly disclosed bank documents obtained by Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, a senior Republican on the Senate Finance and Judiciary committees.
The potential energy projects Hunter Biden discussed with CEFC never came to fruition.
Nonetheless, accounts linked to Hunter Biden received $3.8 million in payments from CEFC through consulting contracts, according to bank records and joint agreements reviewed by The Post.
Biden received an additional $1 million retainer, issued as part of an agreement to represent Patrick Ho, a CEFC official who would later be charged in the United States in connection with a multimillion-dollar scheme to bribe leaders from Chad and Uganda. That retainer agreement, in a newly uncovered document, contains the signatures of both Hunter Biden and Ho, who was later convicted and sentenced to three years in prison.
Hunter Biden, who has a law degree, was not accused of wrongdoing in that scheme and appeared to have little role representing Ho in the federal case. Ho, through his attorney in that case, declined to comment.
Hunter Biden and his attorney did not respond to numerous messages left over the past week. The White House decline
Hunter Biden’s relationship with CEFC took root during a time of financial strain and turmoil for his family, according to court filings and Hunter Biden’s accounts. The Bidens were reeling from the May 2015 death of Hunter’s older brother, Beau, and Hunter was struggling with drug use.
“I was in the throes of addiction,” Hunter wrote in a memoir published last year.
During divorce proceedings with his wife Kathleen, a court filing in the case described “outstanding debts [that] are shocking and overwhelming,” with the couple carrying maxed-out credit cards, double mortgages on both properties they owned and a tax debt of $313,970. Three checks to their housekeeper had bounced, and they owed money to medical providers and therapists, according to a February 2017 filing in D.C. Superior Court.
An intermediary from CEFC initially reached out to Hunter Biden in December 2015 to set up a meeting between the then-vice president’s son and Ye Jianming, the founder and chairman of the Chinese firm, according to verified emails from a purported copy of the laptop hard drive reviewed by the outside experts for The Post.
Vuk Jeremic, a Serbian politician who had recently served as president of the United Nations General Assembly, wrote in an email to the younger Biden that he was hosting a small private dinner in Washington with Ye — whom he called “one of the 10 wealthiest Chinese businessmen” — and wanted Hunter to attend.
“He’s young and dynamic, with the top-level connections in his country,” Jeremic wrote in the Dec. 1, 2015, email.
Hunter Biden was unable to attend the dinner and Jeremic said in an email to The Post that while he knew both men, he was “not involved in their mutual introduction” and found out from media reports that the two had eventually connected.
CEFC, a massive oil and gas company founded in 2002, had financing from government development banks and ties to the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army, according to people who studied the firm. Ye’s official biography said he was once deputy secretary of the China Association for International Friendly Contact, an organization that a 2011 U.S. congressional report called “a front” for the People’s Liberation Army.
While CEFC was ostensibly private, experts on the Chinese economy say it is unlikely that it operated independently of the government.
The Chinese Embassy declined to comment on CEFC ties to the Chinese government or Hunter Biden’s involvement with the firm.
Shortly after Joe Biden left the vice presidency, Hunter Biden and Ye met over dinner in Miami.
The two discussed business opportunities for CEFC in the United States, including a $40 million joint venture to produce liquefied natural gas in Louisiana, according to a July 2019 New Yorker report based on extensive interviews with Hunter Biden.
That deal failed. But Ye was so pleased with his initial meeting with Hunter Biden that after dinner he sent a 2.8-carat diamond to Hunter’s hotel room with a card thanking him for the conversation, according to the New Yorker.
In divorce proceedings, Hunter’s wife would claim the diamond was worth $80,000. Hunter Biden told the New Yorker the value was closer to $10,000, that he gave the diamond to his associates, and that he doesn’t know what they did with it.
In the summer of 2017, Hunter Biden received a request from Ye that would foreshadow subsequent problems for CEFC. Ye said that a top CEFC associate, Patrick Ho, might be under investigation by U.S. law enforcement and he asked Hunter Biden for help. Hunter Biden told the New Yorker that he agreed to represent Ho and to try to figure out if he was under scrutiny by law enforcement.
The execution of the bigger consulting deal between Hunter Biden and CEFC occurred rapidly in early August 2017.
The contract, signed on Aug. 2, 2017, stated that Hunter Biden would get a one-time retainer of $500,000 and would then receive a monthly stipend of $100,000, with his uncle James Biden getting $65,000 a month.
An unsigned copy of the agreement was found on the purported copy of Hunter Biden’s laptop hard drive. A signed copy was included with bank records provided to Grassley and reviewed by The Post. Under the 26-page agreement, they agreed to jointly pursue investments under a company named Hudson West III LLC.
The money began flowing almost immediately, with the first incoming wire of $5 million arriving on Aug. 8, 2017, according to documents found on the copy of Hunter Biden’s laptop and corroborated by identical bank statements that Grassley’s office obtained from Cathay Bank for an account jointly held by Hunter Biden and CEFC executives.
After expenses and personnel costs, the bulk of the money, about $4.8 million, was directed over a 14-month period, usually in increments of $165,000, to an account linked to Hunter Biden, the documents show. During that time period, about $1.4 million was transferred from Hunter’s account to the Lion Hall Group, the consulting firm that James Biden ran, according to other government records reviewed by The Post.
“No comment,” James Biden said when reached on his cellphone and asked about the CEFC deal.
A few weeks after he went into business with the CEFC executives, in the fall of 2017, Hunter Biden requested changes to the fifth-floor office space he was renting at the House of Sweden, an airy building in Georgetown that is home to the Swedish Embassy and other offices.
On Sept. 21, 2017, Hunter Biden wrote to a building manager requesting new office signage to reflect a new family enterprise and a new business relationship: “The Biden Foundation and Hudson West (CEFC-US),” he wrote in emails to the property manager.
He also requested keys for his new office mates: his father, Joe; his mother, Jill; his uncle James; and the Chinese executive, Gongwen Dong.