Chinese Control Over U.S. Oil And Gas At Heart Of Biden Family Influence Peddling, New Whistleblower Reveals
New testimony by a former business partner to Hunter Biden confirms that investors in China, Mexico, And Kazakhstan were buying political influence with President Joe Biden
Republicans are desperately trying to re-fuel their impeachment investigation of President Joe Biden by hyping incarcerated liars and con men, say the media and Democratic officials. On Tuesday, a Justice Department special counsel indicted and imprisoned a Republican witness for allegedly lying, and on Friday, Republican Congressional investigators visited an Alabama prison to take testimony from a man named Jason Galanis, who is in prison for securities fraud and other crimes. “Galanis’ jailhouse interview,” writes the Independent, “marks just the latest example of Republicans seeking information from shady characters amid the so-far floundering impeachment inquiry.”
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) agrees. “Republicans just had their impeachment investigation blown up when their star witness was indicted for peddling Russian disinformation about Joe Biden,” he told Public. “So it’s pretty on-brand that now they’re relying on a convicted, imprisoned felon as their next star witness.”
But much of what Galanis is saying matches what has long been known about the influence peddling by the president’s son, Hunter Biden, including to the Chinese government. “In 2014,” he said in a statement to Congressional investigators, “I agreed with Hunter and Devon that the Burnham & Company would be enhanced by forming a partnership” with a “$300 billion Chinese financial services company closely connected to the Chinese Communist Party.”
A Chinese company paid $1.3 million to the president’s son (Hunter), brother (James), and daughter-in-law (Hallie) through a third party, Congressional investigators discovered.
From 2012 to 2015, Galanis was a business partner to Hunter Biden and Devon Archer, who was convicted along with Galanis of defrauding an Indian tribe. But ten years ago, Biden, Archer, and Galanis sought to “create a financial empire,” according to Politico’s Ben Schreckinger in his 2021 book, The Bidens.
At the heart of that financial empire was selling access to President Biden, says Galanis. “Our objective was to build a diversified private equity platform, which would be anchored by a globally known Wall Street brand [Burnham and Co.] together with a globally known political name,” he said in his statement to investigators, a copy of which Public obtained.
As for the other Republican witness, Alexander Smirnov, his indictment and incarceration last week by Special Counsel David Weiss offers more troubling questions than reassuring answers. According to Weiss, Smirnov “provided false derogatory information” to FBI agents about the Bidens in June 2020.
But it’s not clear why the FBI chose to indict and incarcerate Smirnov after serving for 14 years as what the FBI considered a reliable witness. “I don’t recall ever seeing a false-statements case such as this,” noted former Department of Justice Assistant Attorney Andrew McCarthy.
“Government investigators summoned an informant with a long history of fruitful cooperation to a meeting at which the investigators expected to elicit false statements from the informant yet did not confront him with their belief that he was lying, nor give him an informed opportunity to explain the discrepancies between what he had said and what they believed to be true,” McCarthy added.
There remain good reasons to be suspicious of both Galanis and Smirnov. Galanis was a repeat felon, and the Weiss indictment showed evidence of Smirnov making allegations that he could not prove.
But Hunter Biden and Devon Archer knew before they partnered with him that Galanis “had fallen afoul of securities regulators,” reports Schreckinger. “When others involved in Burnham raised concerns about Galanis’ checkered past, Archer reassured them by pointing to Hunter’s involvement in the business.”
And Galanis’s testimony reinforces what Schreckinger and many others had already reported. “The entire value-add of Hunter Biden to our business,” Galanis told investigators on Friday, “was his family name and his access to his father.”
As Vice President, Joe Biden spoke by phone, attended dinners with Hunter Biden’s business partners, and flew with his son on Air Force Two to China, where Hunter conducted business. A few days and weeks later, Hunter Biden cut multimillion business deals with China and Ukraine.
And even if Smirnov had lied to his FBI handler, it doesn’t explain the FBI’s extraordinary action to publicly torch someone who had been such a reliable informant for so long. “In an ordinary case,” writes McCarthy, “the Justice Department and FBI do not want to convey the message, ‘Cooperate with us, at high risk to yourself and your family, and we will eventually, and without warning, use what you’ve told us to make a case against you.’”
And it is not clear why Special Counsel Weiss chose to indict and incarcerate Smirnov now rather than at some other point in the three and a half years since he allegedly lied to his handler.