WASHINGTON — The National Archives has finally released photos showing then-Vice President Biden meeting with two of first son Hunter Biden’s Chinese government-linked business partners — again proving that the president lied about not interacting with his family’s foreign patrons.
The cache of photos, released long after their potential political salience and days before Biden retires on Jan. 20, also show Chinese President Xi Jinping grinning as then-Vice President Biden introduced his son during the same December 2013 trip to Beijing.
The Xi-Hunter Biden encounter, which had not previously garnered much attention, appears to have been at a meal Hunter described in an email to his former associate Devon Archer as “pretty amazing” because his dad and China’s powerful authoritarian leader “were supposed to spend 2hrs together [but it] stretched to 7hrs. I think they are in love.”
Xi was about two months into his ambitious “Belt and Road” foreign-influence and investment campaign — and a Chinese state-backed company aligned with that vision, BHR Partners, was in the process being co-launched by Hunter.
The newly released photos, which would have been politically explosive if they were released during the now-closed House impeachment inquiry into alleged Biden family corruption, show the elder Biden shaking hands with incoming BHR Partners CEO Jonathan Li and greeting the company’s managing director Ming Xue.
Joe Biden later wrote college recommendation letters for both of Li’s children and, according to Archer, greeted Li during a subsequent speaker-phone conversation when Hunter returned to Beijing.
BHR Partners was officially registered as a company 12 days after Air Force Two landed in Beijing with the Biden family for that trip, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The firm played an important role in foreign acquisitions for China, including the 2016 purchase of a Congolese cobalt mine from US and Canadian companies. Cobalt is used for electric car batteries.
The troubled now-54-year-old first son held a 10% stake in BHR through at least part of his dad’s presidency and says he relinquished control to his “sugar brother” Kevin Morris, who has loaned Hunter a sum believed to top $6.5 million since meeting him at a 2019 Biden campaign fundraiser.
The photos were released to the America First Legal Foundation in response to a transparency lawsuit.
“AFL obtained the photos through our lawsuit against the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which was filed on September 8, 2022,” the group led by President-elect Donald Trump’s adviser Stephen Miller wrote on X.
“NARA had planned to release these photographs on October 23, 2024 — thirteen days before Election Day. Lawyers and representatives for President Biden and President Obama delayed NARA’s release of these photos — as they did with other critical records — until after Election Day.”
The latest release does not document Joe Biden’s alleged interactions with his son and brother James Biden’s associates from a second major Chinese state-linked company.
Biden allegedly attended an early 2017 lunch at Washington’s Four Seasons hotel with CEFC China Energy’s chairman Ye Jianming, shortly before an initial $3 million flowed to a consortium of Biden family associates, former Biden family associate Rob Walker testified to Congress.
Those funds were a thank-you for preliminary work done while Biden was still vice president, Walker said.
Hunter Biden claimed in his impeachment inquiry testimony this year that he could not remember his father’s cameo at the lunch with Ye, who has since gone missing amid a purported anti-corruption campaign by Xi.
A May 2017 email written by Biden family associate James Gilliar penciled in a 10% cut for the “big guy” in reference to Joe Biden and another former family associate, Tony Bobulinski, said he spoke with Joe Biden the same month about the CEFC venture.
A further $5.1 million flowed directly to entities linked to Hunter and James Biden after Hunter wrote to a CEFC associate in July 2017 that he was “sitting here with my father” and expecting payment.
The CEFC venture focused in part on Chinese attempts to purchase US natural gas.
The fact that Joe Biden met with his son and brother James Biden’s foreign associates throughout his vice presidency and in the years that followed has been established by witness testimony — including Hunter’s own in February — though the president continued to deny it as he sought re-election.
“I did not interact with their partners,” Biden told a Post reporter in March, about five months before mutinous fellow Democrats forced the incumbent to relinquish the party’s presidential nomination in July following a disastrous debate performance. Republicans then ended the impeachment inquiry in August with a report accusing Biden of abusing his power.
“You didn’t have dinner or lunch or coffee?” The Post followed up, referring to witness testimony to the contrary from the first family’s former business associates.
“No,” the president said.
Last December, Biden similarly denied interacting with his son and brother’s partners, saying: “I did not. And it’s just a bunch of lies. They’re lies. I did not. They’re lies” — when asked about an Associated Press poll finding that almost 70% of Americans, including 40% of Democrats, believed he acted either illegally or unethically in regards to his family’s business interests.
Hunter Biden confirmed a number of interactions between his father and his business associates, including the handshake with Li, but argued in his impeachment inquiry testimony that they were brief.
Republicans accuse Biden of deceiving the public about his role in his family’s foreign consulting work and both Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) claimed that Biden took a softer approach toward China than warranted on issues ranging from fentanyl exports, espionage and COVID-19 origins due to his family’s receipt of government funds.
Joe Biden interacted with an array of other foreign associates of his family members.
As second son, Hunter organized dinners at Washington’s Cafe Milano in 2014 and 2015 featuring his father and his business associates from Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine, he confirmed.
Joe and Hunter Biden were photographed at one of those dinners with a group from Kazakhstan including Kenes Rakishev, who bought Hunter a $142,000 sports car
Another dinner guest was Vadym Pozharskyi, the board adviser of Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings, which paid Hunter a $1 million salary beginning in early 2014 when his father assumed control of the Obama-Biden administration’s policy toward Ukraine.
Pozharskyi’s thank-you note to Hunter was the subject of The Post’s first bombshell report from the now-president’s son’s abandoned laptop in October 2020, though his father’s campaign vaguely denied the report, claiming that official calendars showed no such meeting.
Documents from the laptop cast doubt on Joe Biden’s claim he “never” discussed business with his son or brother and the then-Democratic presidential nominee falsely claimed the document cache was a “Russian plant” during the final debate of the 2020 election.
Photos from the laptop also show Joe Biden at a 2015 breakfast at the official vice president’s residence with a group of Mexican businessmen who his relatives were courting. He also gave a White House tour to the group.
The outgoing president on Dec. 1 issued a sweeping pardon of his son — heading off potential criminal charges for unregistered foreign lobbying, which could have further probed his own role in business dealings, and wiping the slate clean of Hunter’s June conviction on gun charges a September guilty plea to $1.4 million in tax fraud.
The White House, Hunter Biden’s legal team, BHR Partners and the Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
