The Republican-led House Oversight Committee subpoenaed a bank for Hunter Biden’s records and obtained two wire transfers from Chinese nationals to Hunter Biden in 2019 that listed President Joe Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home as the beneficiary address, the panel announced Tuesday.
The subpoena, which was quietly issued on Monday, is the first time the committee issued a subpoena to a bank for Hunter Biden’s records specifically, a source told CNN.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer said after the announcement that the subpoena was “very specific” and that these two wire transfers are the first examples the panel has found of Hunter Biden receiving money directly and not through a shell company.
“This went directly to Hunter Biden and the address listed was Joe Biden’s,” Comer told reporters.
The six subpoenas the committee issued to banks up to this point were for records of Hunter Biden’s business associates. The committee still plans to issue subpoenas to Hunter and James Biden, the president’s brother, for their personal and business records, according to the source.
The wires allegedly were addressed to Hunter Biden when his father was not in office and do not prove that Joe Biden received any of the money. CNN previously reported Hunter Biden used the Wilmington address on his driver’s license and the home was the site of a family intervention over his drug addiction in 2019.
Comer told CNN his panel is trying to put together a timeline on where Hunter Biden was living around this time.
According to the committee, the wires allegedly showed that Hunter Biden received a $10,000 wire from Wang Xin on July 26, 2019. Separately, on August 2, 2019, Hunter Biden allegedly received a $250,000 wire from Jonathan Li and Tan Ling. Both of the wires listed Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, as the beneficiary address. The committee did not provide the bank wires in their announcement on Tuesday.
Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell said the new allegation from House Republicans “evaporates in thin air the moment facts come out.” Lowell said that in 2017, Hunter Biden made a “substantial investment” in Bohai Harvest Rosemont Partners, where Li is CEO. In 2019, the year of the wire transfers, Lowell said Hunter Biden was borrowing the funds using his equity as security, and the reason the wires went to the Wilmington address was because it was Hunter Biden’s only permanent address at the time.
“This was a documented loan (not a distribution or pay-out) that was wired from a private individual to his new bank account which listed the address on his driver’s license, his parents’ address, because it was his only permanent address at the time,” Lowell said in a statement provided to CNN. “We expect more occasions where the Republican chairs twist the truth to mislead people to promote their fantasy political agenda.”
White House spokesperson for Oversight and Investigations Ian Sams said in a statement to CNN: “Extreme House Republicans are pushing out half-baked innuendo and conspiracy theories that yet again show no evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden, just more discredited personal attacks on him and his family, in a sad effort to distract from their chaotic inability to govern that is leading us to the brink of a dangerous government shutdown.”
House Republicans have yet to uncover any specific evidence that Joe Biden financially benefited from his son’s business dealings and have shifted to accusing the president of lying and corruption.
Comer said in a statement to CNN: “Joe Biden’s abuse of public office for his family’s financial gain threatens our national security. What did the Bidens do with this money from Beijing?”
Hunter Biden’s business former associate Devon Archer testified to Congress earlier this year that Hunter Biden placed his father on speaker phone in front of Li, but that business was not discussed.
“I think you have to understand that there was no business conversation about a cap table or a fee or anything like that. It was, you know, just general niceties and, you know, conversation in general, you know, about the geography, about the weather, whatever it may be,” Archer testified.
Archer also said then-Vice President Joe Biden had a handshake with Li and later wrote a college recommendation for Li’s daughter to go to Georgetown, but she didn’t get in.
