Biden insists he and Hunter never talked foreign biz despite mounting evidence

WASHINGTON — President Biden claimed yet again Monday that he was being truthful when he said he “never” spoke with his son Hunter about his foreign business dealings — despite growing evidence implicating the elder Biden in what Republicans say was a corrupt influence-peddling scheme.

“Did you lie about never speaking to Hunter about his business dealings?” Fox News correspondent Jacqui Heinrich asked Biden as he departed a White House East Room event focused on infrastructure.

“No,” the 80-year-old president replied — just four days after the bombshell release of a text message from Hunter implicating him in an apparent 2017 shakedown of a Chinese government-linked business.

Hunter Biden invoked his dad in the threatening WhatsApp text message on July 30, 2017, to an employee of CEFC China Energy.

Within 10 days of the message, roughly $5 million began flowing to the Biden family from CEFC, a cog in Beijing’s “Belt and Road” influence initiative, according to prior documentation reported in 2020 by Republican-led Senate committees.

In his threatening message, Hunter told CEFC employee Raymond Zhao that he was “sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled.”

“Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight,” Hunter allegedly wrote.

“And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.’”

Photos show Hunter Biden was at his father’s Wilmington, Del., home on the day he sent the message released by the House Ways and Means Committee, which received it from IRS supervisory agent Gary Shapley, who is alleging a cover-up in the tax fraud investigation of Hunter, which ended in a plea deal announced last week that’s expected to keep the president’s son out of prison.

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Biden repeatedly insisted that he never spoke with Hunter or first brother James Biden, with whom Hunter partnered on lucrative ventures, including the partnership with CEFC China Energy.

Biden claimed in September 2019 that he’d “never spoken” with his son about “his overseas business dealings” — after claiming in August 2019 that “I have never discussed, with my son or my brother or with anyone else, anything having to do with their businesses.”

There’s substantial evidence to the contrary.

Former Hunter Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski says he personally met with Joe Biden in 2017 about the CEFC venture and a May 2017 email from another Hunter Biden partner, James Gilliar, penciled in a 10% cut of proceeds for the “big guy,” whom both Bobulinski and Gilliar have identified as Joe Biden.

An October 2017 email from Hunter Biden’s laptop identifies Joe Biden as a participant in a call about CEFC’s attempt to purchase US natural gas. 

An earlier Hunter Biden venture in China also featured Joe Biden’s alleged involvement.

In 2013, Hunter co-founded BHR Partners with Chinese state entities. BHR was registered 12 days after Hunter joined then-VP Biden aboard Air Force Two for an official trip to Beijing, the Wall Street Journal reported. Hunter introduced his dad to BHR CEO Jonathan Li during the trip to China’s capital and Joe Biden later wrote college recommendation letters for Li’s children. 

Hunter wrote in emails retrieved from his former laptop that he had to give “half” of his income to Joe Biden, but IRS investigators were instructed not to focus on the elder Biden’s role in foreign dealings, Shapley testified.

In addition to China, there’s evidence that Joe Biden interacted with Hunter’s associates from Mexico, Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine, according to records from Hunter’s abandoned laptop, photos and witness recollections.

Visitor logs show Joe Biden met with his son’s business partner Devon Archer in 2014 — around the time both Hunter Biden and Archer, a since-convicted felon, joined the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings, which paid the then-second son up to $1 million per year as his father assumed control of the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy.

Then-VP Biden attended an April 16, 2015, dinner at DC’s Cafe Milano with Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi, who sent Hunter a thank-you email the following day. That email formed the basis of The Post’s first world exclusive article on Hunter’s laptop in October 2020. At the time, Biden’s campaign vaguely denied the meeting and the then-candidate trashed the reporting as a “Russian plant” during the final presidential debate.

The House Oversight Committee is investigating an FBI informant’s tipoff that a Burisma executive claims to have paid $10 million in bribes to Joe and Hunter Biden toward the end of the Obama administration.

The Oversight Committee last month also identified nine Biden family relatives who allegedly received money from China and from a Romanian businessman convicted of corruption.

A three-person Kazakhstani delegation and Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina and her husband, former Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov, also attended the Cafe Milano dinner, which Hunter wrote to an associate would be “ostensibly” about his role as chairman of the World Food Program USA.

Baturina allegedly paid $3.5 million to a firm associated with Hunter Biden in February 2014 as she sought US property investments. Baturina and another Russian billionaire who sought US property investments with Hunter Biden have avoided Treasury Department sanctions against Russia’s business elite over the 16-month-old war in Ukraine.

Hunter Biden’s legal team has not disputed the authenticity of the message to Zhao, but attorney Chris Clark said Friday, “Any verifiable words or actions of my client, in the midst of a horrible addiction, are solely his own and have no connection to anyone in his family.”