A top House Republican is looking into the “suspicious” transfer of Hunter Biden’s stake in a Chinese government-linked investment firm to his “sugar brother” Hollywood lawyer who helped pay off millions of dollars of his back taxes.
Kevin Morris, a close Hunter Biden confidante, appears to be the current owner of Skaneateles, an LLC started by the younger Biden through which he held his 10% share in Bohai Harvest RST (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund Management Company, or BHR, according to the company’s business records.
Rep. James Comer (R-KY), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, had sent a letter to Morris in June 2022 about “your sudden patronage of the President’s son” as he demanded records from him. The congressman said Morris’s ownership of the BHR stake raises further concerns.
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“The circumstances surrounding Hunter Biden’s transfer of his interest in a Chinese-backed investment fund are suspicious to the Committee,” Comer told the Washington Examiner. “The Oversight Committee will continue investigating the Biden family’s shady business practices and influence peddling to determine whether the Biden family has been targeted by foreign actors and if there is a national security threat.”
Andy McCarthy, a contributing editor at National Review and a former federal prosecutor, told the Washington Examiner that “rest assured, if this were a Trump story, it would be the only story in America — on Capitol Hill and in the media.”
McCarthy said it appears Hunter “has quietly transferred some or all of the entity through which he held the stake — Skaneateles LLC — in an opaque transaction with Kevin Morris” and argued that “given that a ten percent stake in Bohai Harvest RST could be worth many millions of dollars, and given how patently that would enable China to exert influence over the Bidens, investigating it should be a congressional priority.”
The Washington Examiner obtained a copy of BHR’s “Amended and Restated Joint Venture Contract” dated earlier in 2023. The business record listed the “parties to the joint venture” and said the “managing member” for Skaneateles is now “P. Kevin Morris” (Morris’s first name is Patrick, though he goes by Kevin) with an address for the LLC in Beverly Hills, California. The exact timing of Hunter relinquishing the BHR stake and Morris obtaining it is unclear.
Representatives for Hunter Biden said last year that he had paid off a roughly $2 million past-due tax bill. He allegedly did so by taking out a massive loan from Morris, who has been helping shape his media narrative and legal strategies. Hunter revealed he was under federal investigation for his taxes shortly after the 2020 election. IRS whistleblowers have come forward to allege the investigation has been mishandled and politicized.
The new BHR document states that the registered capital of the company will be considered 30 million Chinese yuan — approximately $4.23 million — and further states Skaneateles will continue to own 10% of BHR’s registered capital, totaling 3 million Chinese yuan (roughly $423,000).
The records from BHR were first unearthed by the Marco Polo investigative group and reported on by several media outlets.
Both Breitbart and the Free Beacon reported on an April email from BHR’s Heng-Yin Zhang to longtime Biden family business partner Jimmy Bulger, whose firm, Thornton Group LLC, also owns a 10% stake in BHR. The email included “signing instructions” for the contract giving Morris, through Skaneateles, the 10% BHR share.
The Chinese firm has invested in a number of controversial Chinese companies that have been sanctioned by the U.S., and it teamed up with a Chinese defense company that helped build up the Russian military and has been implicated in assisting the Kremlin war effort in Ukraine.
BHR’s website says the Chinese company currently manages more than 15 billion Chinese yuan — more than $2.11 billion — in assets and that the company “benefits from the support of its Chinese stakeholders” including the state-owned Bank of China.
Morris is a wealthy Hollywood A-list lawyer who, until the Hunter saga, was best known for representing the creators of South Park and helping co-produce their Broadway musical, “The Book of Mormon.”
The “Contact Person” for Skaneateles in the new BHR records is listed as attorney Bryan Sullivan, who was praised in Variety in April as among “Hollywood’s Top Entertainment Dealmakers and Litigators” in part for his role in “repping” Morris “in various legal matters since news broke about his friendship with Hunter Biden.” Sullivan did not respond to questions from the Washington Examiner.
Hunter Biden wrote in his memoir, Beautiful Things, that in 2013, he and his father, then vice president, flew on Air Force Two to Beijing, where Joe Biden was meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Hunter arranged for his father to shake hands with BHR CEO Jonathan Li in a hotel lobby. Hunter wrote that “our deal with the biggest potential was a partnership with a Chinese private equity fund seeking to invest Chinese capital in companies outside the country.”
Comer demanded records earlier this year from Hunter, telling him to provide the committee with all records of his interactions with Li.
Morris reportedly met Hunter in December 2019 at a Biden presidential campaign fundraiser. Hunter and Morris lived in Los Angeles and reportedly became close, and Hunter named Morris as part of “the outstanding team behind this book” when he published his 2021 memoir.
Joe Biden promised in December 2020 that “my son, my family will not be involved in any business, any enterprise, that is in conflict with or appears to be in conflict, with the appropriate distance from, the presidency and government.”
Washington, D.C.’s Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs informed the Washington Examiner in March 2022 that there have been no filings submitted for Skaneateles since October 2021, when a two-year report for the entity was filed that listed Hunter Biden as the sole “governor” of the company.
Skaneateles is listed as “revoked” in the DCRA’s online business registry because a $300 “reinstatement fee” had not yet been paid for the LLC, a representative for the DCRA told the Washington Examiner.
In November 2021, Chris Clark, a lawyer for Biden, told the New York Times that his client “no longer holds any interest, directly or indirectly, in either BHR or Skaneateles.” Clark declined to provide more clarity on this in 2022. Clark did not answer how Hunter had divested from BHR or Skaneateles, if he had sold his stake, and whether he had made money from the Chinese business effort. The Hunter Biden lawyer did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s questions about Morris and BHR either.
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Morris has been dubbed Hunter’s “sugar brother” by multiple outlets, and the New York Post reported that he previously paid off Hunter’s “$2.8 million IRS debt.” The outlet also said Hunter flew aboard Morris’s luxury private jet in May to and from the Arkansas courtroom where his child support battle against Alexis Lunden Roberts, the mother of his daughter Navy, is being held.
