Lawyer claims Justice Department hiding records on Hunter Biden: report

A Colorado lawyer says the Justice Department is trying to conceal hundreds of “potentially responsive” documents about gifts received by first son Hunter Biden and his uncle James Biden from contacts in China, Russia and Ukraine, according to a new report Monday. ​

Kevin Evans sued the Justice Department in March after he said the agency failed to comply with his Freedom of Information Act request for records about the overseas business relationships of Joe Biden’s son and brother, the Daily Mail reported. 

Evans said he sought documents “pertaining to any relationship, communication, gift(s), and/or remuneration in any form​” from China, Russia or Ukraine.​

He said lawyers for the federal government admitted in court to having at least 400 pages of “potentially responsive” documents but are now saying they can “neither confirm nor deny” whether the records exist. ​

“They eventually produced about 60 pages of documents, but they’re all letters from senators and congressmen asking about Hunter, and letters from DOJ back,” Evans told the Daily Mail.

“Then towards the end of last year they said, ‘Well we have these 400 pages of potentially responsive documents, we need to review them,’” Evans said the lawyers told him, a claim he said the government repeated again in court.

After a few months, Evans said the government came back with the “neither confirm nor deny” response.

Evans said he initially filed an FOIA request in November 2020 after reading about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings in China and Ukraine, connections The Post broke wide open that October. ​

The Post’s expose on the first son’s business relationships was based on emails and messages found on a laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a computer repair shop in Wilmington, Del., in April 2019. ​

Evans said he believes the government will do what it takes to keep the information under wraps.

“I’m quite confident that they will move for summary judgment on the privacy exemptions under FOIA in an effort to avoid having to produce these documents,” he told the publication.

“But I don’t think they should in this instance, particularly when they’ve disclosed and put on the record that potentially responsive documents exist.”

Evans said the next status hearing in the case is scheduled for Jan. 9.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has said James Biden is a focus of investigators examining Hunter Biden’s business deals. 

Grassley and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) released a report in September 2020 on the Bidens’ business pursuits. 

In April, the two senators released new documents delving deeper into the Biden family’s business ties.

The documents revealed that Hunter Biden and Jim Biden received monthly payments of $100,000 and $65,000, respectively, as part of an August 2017 consulting agreement between the first son and Gongwen Dong, a top official at CEFC China Energy.

The documents also indicate that Jim Biden’s company, The Lion Hall Group, received payments directly from Hudson West III, a company jointly owned at the time by Hunter Biden’s law firm Owasco and Coldharbour Capital LLC, which Johnson and Grassley’s September 2020 report linked to Dong.

“We have people with the Biden name dealing with Chinese business people that have a relationship to the Communist Party,” Grassley said at the time. “I think it’s very concerning.”