Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler slapped President Biden with "Four Pinocchios" over his false claim that his son Hunter never made money from China.
Kessler began Tuesday's fact-check of the president by revisiting comments he made in both presidential debates in 2020 when he repeatedly denied claims that Hunter did business with China.
"But now, nearly three years later, Biden’s assertions have been directly rebutted by Hunter himself," Kessler wrote. "In court testimony last week, the younger Biden acknowledged that he in fact had been paid substantial sums in China — the first official confirmation that this was the case."
The fact-checker laid out how Hunter Biden accompanied his father while he was vice president on an official trip to China in 2013 and "by Hunter's own admission, he used the trip to connect with a Chinese business partner, even introducing the partner to his father."
"Twelve days after he flew to Beijing, Hunter Biden joined the board of a just-formed investment advisory firm known as BHR (Bohai, Harvest and Rosemont), whose partners included Chinese entities, including the man he introduced to his father," Kessler wrote.
"Separately, after Joe Biden left public office, Hunter Biden in 2017 inked a deal with CEFC China Energy, a Chinese energy conglomerate. The Washington Post reported last year that documents, including emails found on a Hunter Biden laptop that emerged during the final weeks of the 2020 presidential campaign, showed that over the course of 14 months, the CEFC and its executives paid $4.8 million to entities controlled by Hunter Biden and President Biden’s brother, James. The Post did not find evidence that Joe Biden personally benefited from or knew details about the transactions with CEFC," he said.
He went on to detail Hunter Biden's exchange with U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika, who grilled him on his foreign business earnings including a $1 million retainer he received from Patrick Ho, a CEFC official who Kessler noted "would later be charged in the United States in connection with a multimillion-dollar scheme to bribe leaders from Chad and Uganda."
Regarding the "Pinocchio Test," Kessler concluded that while then-candidate Joe Biden was rebuffing various claims being made by then-President Trump during the debates, one of his comments was in direct response to a question from a moderator.
"It’s possible he purposely tailored his answer to just the period when he was vice president, but Biden has never been known for such parsing of language. The president tends to be sloppier in his phrasing — which often gets him into trouble," Kessler told readers. "But the fact remains that Biden, during the debate, denied his son had made money in China. In court last week, his son has said he earned hundreds of thousands of dollars from Chinese business deals."
Biden was then handed "Four Pinocchios" by the Post.
Hunter Biden has been at the center of controversy ever since he struck what critics call a "sweetheart deal" with the DOJ, which ended up falling apart due to confusion over the immunity he was receiving despite ongoing investigations.
IRS whistleblowers leading the probe in the younger Biden's tax crimes have come forward alleging DOJ interference in their work, telling lawmakers they were discouraged from looking into whether his father was involved in the shady business dealings and that Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss was blocked from bringing more serious charges in California and Washington D.C., something Weiss himself has pushed backed on despite the fact the claim was partially independently verified by The New York Times.
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Devon Archer, the former longtime business partner of Hunter Biden, also testified to lawmakers on Monday that Hunter had put his father on speakerphone during meetings at least 20 times, though Democrats have insisted they only exchanged pleasantries and spoke of things like "the weather."
Meanwhile, the White House has pivoted its talking points to say that Biden had never been "in business" with Hunter, which was not the same as his repeated claims during the 2020 election cycle that he had never discussed business with his son.
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