I have written several articles on our Presidential candidate Biden. A list of the links have been provided at the bottom of this article for your convenience. This article will, however address different aspects on Presidential candidate Biden’s Campaign.
Why is Joe Biden so warm toward China? In early May, Biden raised eyebrows when he shrugged off concerns over the China threat. “Come on, man,” Biden said. “I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what, they’re not competition for us.” Perhaps Biden’s insouciant attitude toward the Chinese government has to do with the fact that his family does not consider them competitors but business partners.
In 2013, then-Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden flew aboard Air Force Two to China. Less than two weeks later, Hunter Biden’s firm inked a $1 billion private equity deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China. The deal was later expanded to $1.5 billion. In short, the Chinese government funded a business that it co-owned along with the son of a sitting vice president. If it sounds shocking that a vice president would shape US-China policy as his son — who has scant experience in private equity — clinched a coveted billion-dollar deal with an arm of the Chinese government, that’s because it is.
Without the aid of subpoena power, here’s what we know. The businesses of Hunter Biden and his partners created a series of LLCs involved in multibillion-dollar private equity deals with companies owned by the Chinese government. The centerpiece of these deals is Rosemont Seneca Partners, an investment firm controlled by Hunter Biden and his associates: Chris Heinz, who is John Kerry’s stepson, and Heinz’s longtime associate Devon Archer. The trio founded Rosemont Seneca in 2009 and quickly began making deals through a series of overlapping entities under the Rosemont name.
Less than a year after opening Rosemont Seneca’s doors, Hunter Biden and Archer were in China meeting with top Chinese officials. To assist in their new venture, they partnered with a Massachusetts-based consultancy called the Thornton Group, headed by James Bulger, son of former Massachusetts state Sen. Billy Bulger. James Bulger has the dubious honor of being named after his uncle, the notorious mob hitman James “Whitey” Bulger. The Thornton Group’s account of the meeting on their Chinese-language Web site is telling: Chinese executives “extended their warm welcome” to the “Thornton Group, with its US partner Rosemont Seneca chairman Hunter Biden (second son of the now Vice President Joe Biden).”
The purpose of the meetings was to “explore the possibility of commercial cooperation and opportunity.” Curiously, details about the meeting did not appear on their English-language Web site. The timing of this meeting was also notable. It occurred just hours before Hunter Biden’s father, the vice president, met with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Washington as part of the Nuclear Security Summit. Twelve days after Hunter stepped off Air Force Two in Beijing, his company signed a historic deal with the Bank of China, the state-owned financial behemoth often used as a tool of the Chinese government. The Bank of China had created a first-of-its-kind investment fund called Bohai Harvest RST (BHR). According to BHR, one of its founding partners was none other than Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC. It was an unprecedented arrangement: the government of one of America’s fiercest competitors going into business with the son of one of America’s most powerful decisionmakers.
Chris Heinz claims neither he nor Rosemont Seneca Partners, the firm he had part ownership of, had any role in the deal with Bohai Harvest. Nonetheless, Biden, Archer and the Rosemont name became increasingly involved with China. Archer became the vice chairman of Bohai Harvest, helping oversee some of the fund’s investments. Troublingly, some of those investments had major implications for national security. In December 2014, BHR became an “anchor investor” in the IPO of China General Nuclear Power Corp. (CGN), a state-owned energy company involved in the construction of nuclear reactors. In April 2016, the US Justice Department would charge CGN with stealing nuclear secrets from the United States — actions prosecutors said could cause “significant damage to our national security.”
Trained as a lawyer at Yale, Hunter had primarily worked as a lobbyist and consultant. His previous foray into financial services, Paradigm Global Advisors, was linked to Stanford Financial, a multibillion dollar Ponzi scheme. That Hunter Biden had no experience in China, and little in private equity, didn’t dissuade the Chinese government from giving his company a business opportunity in place of established global financial brands like Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs. In fact, the Chinese government wasn’t done funding deals with Hunter Biden. Also in December 2014, a Chinese state-backed conglomerate called Gemini Investments Limited was negotiating and sealing deals with Hunter Biden’s Rosemont on several fronts. That month, it made a $34 million investment into a fund managed by Rosemont. The following August, Rosemont Realty, another sister company of Rosemont Seneca, announced that Gemini Investments was buying a 75 percent stake in the company. The terms of the deal included a $3 billion commitment from the Chinese, who were eager to purchase new US properties. Shortly after the sale, Rosemont Realty was rechristened Gemini Rosemont. Chinese executives lauded the deal. “Rosemont, with its comprehensive real-estate platform and superior performance history, was precisely the investment opportunity Gemini Investments was looking for in order to invest in the US real estate market,” declared Li Ming, Sino-Ocean Land Holdings Limited and Gemini Investments chairman. “We look forward to a strong and successful partnership.”
The plan was to use Chinese money to acquire more properties in the United States. “We see great opportunities to continue acquiring high-quality real estate in the US market,” one company executive said. “The possibilities for this venture are tremendous.” Finally, in 2015, BHR joined forces with a subsidiary of Chinese state-owned military aviation contractor Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) to buy American precision-parts manufacturer Henniges. Because Henniges manufactured technology with possible military applications, the transaction required approval by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. CFIUS reviews are required for business transactions that have potential national security implications. The Biden-Bank of China fact-pattern is arresting in its bravura and scale. Moreover, it turns out that the Biden dealings didn’t just take place in China, but in Ukraine, as well. For the sake of brevity I will limit my discussion to China.
I want to revisit some key areas in the China Timeline.
In 2009, Hunter co-founded a new venture, Rosemont Seneca Partners. Rosemont and Hunter were given extraordinary opportunities in China while his father was vice president. Here are some key facts:
1. Joe Biden met with Hunter’s Chinese partners days before they established a new investment firm.
In December 2013, Hunter landed in Beijing aboard Air Force Two, accompanying his father on an official visit to China. Less than two weeks later, Hunter’s company, Rosemont Seneca, became a partner in a new investment company backed by the state-owned Bank of China. Christening the new firm Bohai Harvest RST (BHR), the partners set out to raise $1 billion for the new fund. Representatives of the Biden family have denied any connection between the vice president’s visit and Hunter’s business. However, a BHR representative told The New Yorker earlier this year that Hunter used the opportunity to introduce his father to Chinese private equity executive Jonathan Li, who became CEO of BHR after the deal’s conclusion.
2. BHR is a multibillion-dollar enterprise.
Exceeding their initial fundraising goal, the partners at BHR raised their target to $1.5 billion for the new fund. The company’s website now brags that it manages “over RMB 15 billion” in assets — the equivalent of about $2.1 billion in today’s dollars. Under the terms of the deal, BHR, in which Hunter’s firm held an equity stake, would be a lead investor in the fund. Other investors include China Development Bank and China’s social security fund.
3. Hunter and his partners had prominent roles within the company.
Despite his relative lack of private equity experience, Hunter landed a prominent role with the new company. Under the terms of the original deal, Rosemont Seneca, Hunter’s firm, shared a 30% stake in BHR with the Thornton Group, which was run by James Bulger, the son of longtime Massachusetts state Senate President Billy Bulger. Hunter and Bulger joined the board, along with Devon Archer, Hunter’s longtime business partner. Archer would also serve as vice chairman of the fund’s investment committee. The value of these partnerships to BHR is clear. Its own website boasts: “BHR, with its unique mixed ownership, combines the resources and platforms of China’s largest financial institutions … and the networks and know-how of our U.S.-based investment fund and advisory firm shareholders.” Hunter Biden claimed to the New Yorker that he and his partners have not seen any money from the BHR deal. But even if true, the potential payouts are significant.
4. BHR represented a unique investment opportunity.
BHR’s relationships weren’t the only unique thing about the company. Rosemont Seneca was getting a piece of something that no other Western firm had: a private equity fund inside the recently established Shanghai Free-Trade Zone, with a focus on international acquisitions. With the backing of the state-owned Bank of China, one of the country’s “big four” financial institutions, BHR had access to the types of deals that most Western firms only dreamed of, including IPOs of state-owned companies.
5. BHR invested in strategically sensitive assets in both China and the United States.
In December 2014, BHR became an “anchor investor” in the IPO of China General Nuclear Power Company (CGN), a state-owned nuclear company involved in the development of nuclear reactors. Not only is CGN a strategically important company in China, it was also facing legal scrutiny in the United States. In 2016, CGN was charged with espionage by the Justice Department for stealing US nuclear secrets. As a “cross-border” investment fund, Bohai Harvest was interested in making deals outside of China. In 2015, BHR acquired Henniges Automotive, a Michigan-based producer of vibration-dampening equipment, alongside Chinese military contractor Aviation Industry Corp. of China (AVIC). Given the military applications of Henniges’ technology, the deal required federal approval. Like CGN, AVIC was suspected of stealing US technology for its purposes. Not long after the Henniges deal closed, AVIC debuted its new J-20 fighter — incorporating designs allegedly stolen from the US’ F-35 program.
6. It wasn’t an isolated incident.
In 2015, a state-backed real estate conglomerate acquired a controlling stake in Rosemont Realty, a sister company of Rosemont Seneca where Hunter served as an advisor. As part of the deal, the Chinese promised $3 billion for commercial office property acquisitions in the US — a major windfall for the company. It wouldn’t be Hunter’s last episode with Chinese capital. In May 2017, he met with Ye Jianming, chairman of Chinese energy company CEFC, to discuss investment opportunities in the US. After the meeting, Ye sent a 2.8-carat diamond to Hunter along with a “thank you” card. When, six months later, a CEFC executive was arrested in New York on unrelated bribery charges, his first phone call was to Hunter’s uncle, James Biden. James told the New York Times that “he believed it [the call] had been meant for Hunter” and that “he had passed on his nephew’s contact information.” Ye, now accused of bribing a Communist Party official, has since been detained in his native China. All of this adds up to an extremely troubling pattern. Much of the media, as they so often do, have chosen to air the spin, rather than the facts, on this issue. Did the Chinese give favorable treatment to Hunter Biden to curry favor with his vice-president father? The American public deserves to understand what exactly Hunter Biden was doing overseas and the extent of then-Vice President Biden’s involvement.
How five members of Joe Biden’s family got rich through his connections:
Political figures have long used their families to route power and benefits for their own self-enrichment. In my new book, “Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite,” one particular politician — Joe Biden — emerges as the king of the sweetheart deal, with no less than five family members benefiting from his largesse, favorable access and powerful position for commercial gain. In Biden’s case, these deals include foreign partners and, in some cases, even US taxpayer dollars. The Biden family’s apparent self-enrichment involves five family members: Joe’s son Hunter, son-in-law Howard, brothers James and Frank, and sister Valerie.
James Biden:
Joe Biden’s younger brother, James, has been an integral part of the family political machine from the earliest days when he served as finance chair of Joe’s 1972 Senate campaign, and the two have remained quite close. After Joe joined the US Senate, he would bring his brother James along on congressional delegation trips to places like Ireland, Rome and Africa. When Joe became vice president, James was a welcomed guest at the White House, securing invitations to such important functions as a state dinner in 2011 and the visit of Pope Francis in 2015. Sometimes, James’ White House visits dovetailed with his overseas business dealings, and his commercial opportunities flourished during his brother’s tenure as vice president. Hillstone a company in which James Biden was a minority member made an error in 2013. They were forced to back out of a six year contract with the US Army Corps Of Engineers. However James Biden remained with Hill International, which accumulated contracts from the federal government for dozens of projects, including projects in the United States, Puerto Rico, Mozambique and elsewhere.
Hunter Biden:
With the election of his father as vice president, Hunter Biden launched businesses fused to his father’s power that led him to lucrative deals with a rogue’s gallery of governments and oligarchs around the world. Sometimes he would hitch a prominent ride with his father aboard Air Force Two to visit a country where he was courting business. Other times, the deals would be done more discreetly. Always they involved foreign entities that appeared to be seeking something from his father. There was, for example, Hunter’s involvement with an entity called Burnham Financial Group, where his business partner Devon Archer — who’d been at Yale with Hunter — sat on the board of directors. Burnham became the vehicle for a number of murky deals abroad, involving connected oligarchs in Kazakhstan and state-owned businesses in China. But one of the most troubling Burnham ventures was here in the United States, in which Burnham became the center of a federal investigation involving a $60 million fraud scheme against one of the poorest Indian tribes in America, the Oglala Sioux.
Howard Krein:
The chief medical officer of StartUp Health, Howard Krein, is married to Joe Biden’s youngest daughter, Ashley. StartUp Health is an investment consultancy based out of New York City, and in June 2011, the company barely had a website. The firm was the brainchild of three siblings from Philadelphia. Steven Krein is CEO and co-founder, while his brother, Dr. Howard Krein, serves as chief medical officer. Sister Bari serves as the firm’s chief strategy officer. A friend named Unity Stoakes is a co-founder and serves as president. StartUp Health was barely up and running when, in June 2011, two of the company’s executives were ushered into the Oval Office of the White House. They met with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. The following day, the new company would be featured at a large health care tech conference being run by the US Department of Health and Human Services, and StartUp Health executives became regular visitors to the White House, attending events in 2011, 2014 and 2015.
Frank Biden:
n late March 2009, Vice President Joe Biden landed in Costa Rica aboard Air Force Two, and went to the Costa Rican presidential palace for a one-on-one with President Oscar Arias. The Biden visit had symbolic significance. The last time a high-ranking American official had visited the country was back in 1997, when Bill Clinton had come. Joe Biden’s trip to Costa Rica came at a fortuitous time for his brother Frank, who was busy working deals in the country. Just months after Vice President Biden’s visit, in August, Costa Rica News announced a new multilateral partnership “to reform Real Estate in Latin America” among Frank Biden, a developer named Craig Williamson, and the Guanacaste Country Club, a newly planned resort. The partnership, which appears to be ongoing, was wrapped in a beautiful package as a “call on resources available to the companies and individuals to reform the social, economic and environmental practices of real estate developers across the world by example.” In real terms, Frank’s dream was to build in the jungles of Costa Rica thousands of homes, a world-class golf course, casinos, and an anti-aging center. The Costa Rican government was eager to cooperate with the vice president’s brother. As it happened, Joe Biden had been asked by President Obama to act as the administration’s point man in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Valerie Biden Owens:
During his years in the Senate, Biden’s family benefited financially in other ways as he leveraged political power. Joe’s sister Valerie ran all of his Senate campaigns, as well as his presidential runs in 1988 and 2008. But she was also a senior partner in a political messaging firm named Joe Slade White & Company; the only two executives listed at the firm were Joe Slade White and Valerie. The firm received large fees from the Biden campaigns that Valerie was running. Two and a half million dollars in consulting fees flowed to her firm from Citizens for Biden and Biden For President Inc. during the 2008 presidential bid alone. Joe Slade White & Company worked for Biden campaigns over 18 years.
University of Pennsylvania’s Biden Center:
When Joe Biden announced he was opening a foreign policy center at the University of Pennsylvania, the goals for the project were ambitious. At its founding in 2018, Biden described the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement as “a place where policymakers here and abroad will know they can be in touch with some of the best minds.”
The center is one of several organizations Biden founded since leaving the White House in 2017, including the domestic policy-focused Biden Institute at the University of Delaware and the Biden Cancer Initiative, all launched in 2017. All three entities have refused to reveal the sources of their funding, a potential landmine for the Democrats’ presumptive presidential nominee that raises questions about the influence of individual, corporate, and foreign donations on the presidential candidate. While the Penn Biden Center has not released information on its donors, foreign funding to the University of Pennsylvania has risen more than threefold since its soft opening, spiking to over $100 million last year from $31 million in 2016, according to Department of Education records.
Between March 2017 and the end of 2019, the University of Pennsylvania received a total of $61 million in gifts and contracts from China, according to Department of Education records. In the preceding four years, the university received just $19 million from China. Many of the Chinese contributions were listed as coming from “anonymous” donors, a practice experts say is an “easy tactic” that allows the Chinese to penetrate the U.S. education system. “Anonymous giving to universities is an easy tactic the Chinese Communist Party can use to further its pernicious influence in American universities,” Michael Sobolik, an Indo-Pacific studies fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council, told the Washington Free Beacon. Penn received a total of 23 anonymous gifts from China between March 2017 and the end of 2019, totaling over $21 million. In the preceding four years, the university had disclosed just five anonymous donations from China, totaling less than $5 million.
“The reporting and disclosure violations of gifts from China to U of Penn and its Penn Biden Center are both numerous and flagrant,” said Paul Kamenar, counsel for NLPC. “The Department of Justice should take swift enforcement action in federal court and recoup all costs getting them to comply with the law.” The Biden Center is part of the University of Pennsylvania’s “Penn Global” department, headed by Biden’s campaign health care adviser Ezekiel Emanuel, which handles the university’s foreign research and outreach programs.
Those programs have become increasingly focused on China in recent years. According to the Penn Global website, the university has “over 20 international partnerships with Chinese institutions” and has conducted “over 350 research projects and instructional activities in China.” According to the Penn Global website, the university has “over 20 international partnerships with Chinese institutions” and has conducted “over 350 research projects and instructional activities in China.”
The university also hosts the annual Penn China Research Symposium. This year’s event in late January featured Chinese consul general Huang Ping, who said in his speech that he had “lost count how many times I have visited UPenn, probably more than any university in New York City.” He also warned the United States against distancing itself from China. “Considering China’s advantages in cost, market and supply chain, and its growing edge in innovation, to decouple from China is to decouple from opportunities,” he said in his speech.
Conclusion:
I believe that I have shown that not only did members of the Biden family received preferential treatments and appointments to positions that they were woefully unqualified for. I also believe that I have shown that money was funneled in the form of donations to Biden,s charities. I guess Joe Biden studied the Clinton handbook on how to become rich. I have also shown that Hunter Biden received money from China, and what I chose not to discuss was that he also received money from the Ukraine. I believe that Biden should be held accountable for these dealings. At the very least he should remove himself from his candidacy for the 2020 Presidency.
Resources:
nypost.com, “The troubling reason why Biden is so soft on China,” By Peter Schweizer; politico.com, “Biden Inc,” By Ben Schreckinger;nypost.com, “6 facts about Hunter Biden’s business dealings in China,” By Peter Schweizer and Jacob McLeod; nypost.com “How five members of Joe Biden’s family got rich through his connections,” By Peter Schweizer; freebeacon.com,”Across Biden Charitable Organizations, A Refusal to Disclose Funding,” By Alana Goodman;
Addendum:
Biden Postings
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/09/10/is-china-helping-biden-become-president/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/07/21/biden-and-his-mask-does-it-give-him-super-powers/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/07/10/if-you-are-voting-for-biden-consider-psychiatric-help/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/07/01/twelve-mainstream-politicians-6-of-12-joe-biden/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/13/is-joe-biden-competent-to-be-president-under-the-25th-amendment/