James Biden, brother of President Joe Biden, confirmed to the FBI last year that his family tried to help CEFC China Energy Co. purchase a U.S. liquid natural gas facility in Louisiana, according to documents released Wednesday by the House Ways and Means Committee.
CEFC, closely linked to the CCP and Chinese President Xi Jinping, was chaired by Ye Jianming, an associate of Hunter Biden. James Biden told the FBI he personally met once with Jianming about CEFC’s interest in acquiring the liquid natural gas facility.
Chinese President Xi Jinping in China’s northern Shaanxi province on May 19, 2023. (FLORENCE LO/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
“James B noted that RHB portrayed CEFC to him as Chairman Ye was a protégé of President Xi,” FBI agents noted in a memo.
“James B recalled that the life changing meeting was the deal with Monkey Island. Monkey Island was off the coast of Louisiana near the Gulf of Mexico. James B stated that there was room for a port to be developed and that the properties were pre-approved,” the FBI memo said. “The island was 50-100 miles from the Gulf of Mexico and that there was a clear passage to offload and load gas. CEFC was supposed to buy it from Greg Michaels (‘Michaels’) (the CEO and Owner in control of Monkey Island).”
WATCH — “Give Me a Break, Man”: Biden SNAPS at Reporter Asking About Family’s Business Relations in China:
The White House
James Biden also told investigators that he worked with Louisiana state officials to cut regulatory red tape to benefit the deal. “James B recalled talking with appropriate people in the governor’s office regarding the permits and recalled that it was supposed to be on a fast track,” the FBI memo stated.
The deal never materialized.
As Breitbart News exclusively reported in 2021, documents from the infamous “laptop from hell” revealed that Hunter and James Biden worked on a deal in 2017 to transfer liquid natural gas from Louisiana to CEFC. Breitbart News’s Emma-Jo Morris reported:
That wouldn’t stop the Chinese players in the deal, however, from going on to push Hunter to help his father mount a bid for president years after.
In an email from October 23, 2017, an intermediary by the name of JiaQi Bao, between Hunter Biden and his Chinese business associates, sent an email thanking Hunter and Joe Biden’s brother, Jim, for arranging a meeting with Greg Michaels, the president of a natural gas liquefaction facility in Louisiana called Monkey Island LNG, and detailing plans for what will be discussed.
“We have a 10:30 meeting tomorrow @ 3CC with Greg Michaels, the president of Monkey Island LNG Terminal project in Louisiana. Thank you for Jim and Hunter for bringing the owner to talk to us directly,” she writes in an email received by Hunter, Jim, and Gongwen Dong, a Chinese investor involved in multiple deals linked to the Bidens.
Hunter Biden (L) and James Biden (R) (Teresa Kroeger/Getty Images for World Food Program USA, AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)
James and Hunter Biden’s CEFC partner, Ye, is a key individual in the Biden family’s Chinese business. Ye paid Hunter a $1 million retainer fee for legal services in 2017. Hunter also received a large diamond from Ye in February 2017 worth an estimated $80,000. Ye “had direct abiding and deep ties to Chinese intelligence when they were arranging these ideals for the Bidens,” according to Breitbart News senior contributor and Government Accountability Institute president Peter Schweizer.
“The Bidens are the best I know at doing exactly what the chairman wants from this partnership,” Hunter Biden told a CEFC associate in 2017.
WATCH — WH Spox DODGES Question About Chinese Payments to Biden Family: “I’m Just Not Going to Even Respond”:
The White House / YouTube
Biden family members accepted money from a deal with CEFC. The House Oversight Committee revealed in March that CEFC controlled State Energy HK Limited, a company linked to the $1.3 million collective payments to the Biden family members.
Through the Biden family’s suspicious activity reports (SARs), the committee also discovered a Biden associate, Rob Walker, received a $3 million wire transfer from CEFC. In turn, four Biden family members — Hunter, James, Hallie, and an unidentified “Biden” — received a collective $1.3 million cut from the $3 million wire transfer.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
