Hunter Biden and his associates made $10 million more than was previously known from their foreign business dealings, newly released bank records show.
The House Oversight Committee said on Wednesday that it had sent subpoenas to six banks for the records of businesses and people who worked with the Biden family but noted that congressional investigators have not yet sent subpoenas for any of the bank records of Biden family members.
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A memo prepared by the committee said congressional investigators have now confirmed $20 million worth of payments through companies run by Hunter Biden and his business associates; in May, the committee said its work had uncovered $10 million of payments.
And those payments likely paint an impartial picture of how much income Hunter Biden and his partners raked in while Joe Biden was vice president. The new records focus only on a handful of deals involving Ukraine, Russia, and Kazakhstan; Hunter Biden is known to have taken payments from Chinese entities as well, including in the form of a large diamond that is now missing.
The latest records involve just three entities in the Rosemont Seneca family of companies. Hunter Biden and his former business partner, Devon Archer, established the companies while Joe Biden was vice president, and the three under scrutiny this week represent just a fraction of the more than 20 shell companies used by members of the Biden family and their associates during Joe Biden’s vice presidency.
One of the most eye-popping payments involved a $142,300 wire from Kenes Rakishev, a wealthy and well-connected Kazhakstani oligarch who, emails show, was interested in investing in Rosemont Seneca so he could build “a more global brand.”
The day after Rakishev sent the money, one of the Rosemont Seneca entities used it to purchase a sports car that cost exactly $142,300.
Archer appeared to assure Rakishev in email correspondence from 2014 that he could arrange for then-Secretary of State John Kerry to visit Kazakhstan. Rakishev had requested that Kerry visit his country, and Archer said he would “ensure [it’s] planned soonest” but only “if we have some business started as planned.”
Archer and Hunter Biden also worked toward a deal involving Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company on whose board they both served, and a Chinese company that would have been based in Kazakhstan. It’s unclear whether the deal came to fruition.
In 2014, Hunter Biden introduced then-Vice President Joe Biden to Rakishev at a dinner, the House Oversight Committee said.
Another notable payment came from Yelena Baturina, who also attended the dinners with Joe Biden. Baturina is a powerful Russian oligarch who paid one of the Rosemont Seneca companies $3.5 million in February 2014, around the same time as the first dinner that Joe Biden attended.
Baturina’s name surfaced in the committee’s transcribed interview with Archer.
But Archer told lawmakers that the payment was some kind of mistake and said he did not know why Baturina sent the money to Rosemont Seneca Thornton, an entity he formed with Hunter Biden and Jim Bulger, the nephew of the late mobster James “Whitey” Bulger.
“We’re really not sure why that 3.5 went to RST,” Archer told lawmakers, according to the transcript. “I don’t know what the specifics of the wire were, but it was — quite frankly, it was not supposed to go there, but that’s where it went.”
Rosemont Seneca Thornton, one of the three Rosemont Seneca entities explored in the latest Oversight Committee memo, was formed by Archer, Hunter Biden, and Bulger in 2013 in anticipation of a larger deal in China. Oversight Committee investigators noted in their memo that the Chinese work would be explored in a later memo.
Bank records also showed that Hunter Biden collected his income from Burisma in smaller amounts dispersed over time from one of the Rosemont Seneca accounts. Burisma did not pay Hunter Biden directly during that time.
The arrangement raised suspicions in part because of its structure and in part because Hunter Biden did not pay taxes on any of his income from Burisma, which was then paying Rosemont Seneca $83,000 per month on his behalf.
The statute of limitations on income Hunter Biden earned in 2014 and 2015 from Burisma has ended. Archer said recently that Hunter Biden’s income from Burisma dropped dramatically once his father left office.
The newly uncovered payments deepen the scrutiny of Hunter Biden’s business dealings, particularly because his father met in person with executives from Burisma, Rakishev, and Baturina all around the same time they were paying Hunter Biden’s associated companies.
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The White House has continued to dismiss the findings as old news and maintained Joe Biden’s denials of having ever been involved.
House Republicans, meanwhile, have moved closer to a possible impeachment inquiry to speed up their investigation of the president’s involvement in making his family so much money.
