Hunter Biden shows up at WH Thanksgiving, turkey, sorry

WASHINGTON – He may need his own pardon soon.

First son Hunter Biden, who has used the Secret Service codename “Chieftain,” appeared at his father’s Thanksgiving turkey pardon Monday — as House Republicans vowed to investigate President Biden’s role in his family’s foreign influence.

The 52-year-old head of the Biden family’s international business relations carried his 2-year-old son Beau to the white-feathered turkeys “Chocolate” and “Chip” on the White House lawn before the elder Biden “pardoned” them. .

Hunter Biden was also at the White House on Saturday for the wedding of his eldest child, Naomi, who is reportedly living in the executive mansion.

The 19th wedding in White House history was closed to the press in a break with historic practice — and reporters were unable to interview the first son at the turkey pardon because the press was relegated to the distant rear of the audience.

Last week, the new Republican leaders of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees — Rep. James Comer of Kentucky and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio — said they would launch investigations into the president’s role in his son’s business dealings.

As vice president from 2009 to 2017 and before running for president in 2020, Joe Biden met repeatedly with the foreign business contacts of Hunter Biden and first brother James Biden, as well as with Americans who worked with them.

“This committee will assess whether this President is compromised or influenced by foreign dollars. This is an investigation into Joe Biden,” Comer said at a Nov. 17 news conference.

Republicans have also called on the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden over possible tax fraud, illegal foreign lobbying, money laundering and possible lying on a federal gun purchase form.

On Friday, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel, veteran prosecutor Jack Smith, to handle the ongoing investigation into former President Donald Trump — with Garland noting that Trump’s announcement of a presidential candidacy days earlier played a key role in his decision.

Biden has denied making any money from his son’s foreign operations, and the White House says he stands by his 2019 claim that he never discussed the companies with his son — despite evidence he spoke to staffers at Hunter and James Biden from China interacted. Kazakhstan, Mexico, Russia and Ukraine.

Hunter Biden often asked to work in countries where his father was vice president—including Ukraine, where Hunter, despite having no relevant industry experience, made up to $1 million a year from energy company Burisma while his father managed Ukraine politics of the Obama administration.

Online business records show the first son still holds a 10% stake in BHR Partners, a state-backed Chinese private equity firm that manages $2.1 billion in assets and has a prominent role in the acquisition of assets abroad.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Hunter Biden co-founded BHR Partners in 2013, within weeks of joining then-Vice President Biden aboard Air Force Two on an official trip to Beijing. Hunter introduced his father to new BHR CEO Jonathan Li in a hotel lobby, and Joe Biden later wrote college recommendation letters for Li’s children.

At another Chinese company, Hunter and James Biden made $4.8 million from CEFC China Energy — a foreign-influenced arm of Beijing’s Belt and Road initiative — in 2017 and 2018, according to the Washington Post.

A May 2017 email about the CEFC partnership states that the “big one” is entitled to a 10% cut.

Two former Hunter Biden employees, Tony Bobulinski and James Gilliar, identified Joe Biden as the “big guy,” and Bobulinski says he met with Joe Biden about the deal.

Documents from Hunter Biden’s former laptop indicate that Joe Biden attended a dinner at DC’s Cafe Milano in 2015, to which his son invited a number of associates – including a Burisma executive, a trio of Kazakh businessmen, Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina and her husband, ex-Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov.

Baturina reportedly paid $3.5 million to a Hunter Biden-affiliated firm in 2014 and remains one of only a handful of Russian billionaires not to face US sanctions in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

3rd House Republican Elise Stefanik (R-NY) told the Post in an interview last month that Republicans would attempt to obtain visitor logs from Joe Biden’s homes in Delaware, where he spent more than a quarter of his days as president spent meeting with unfamiliar individuals.

“Republicans must stand up for transparency, and we must have no hesitation in using our subpoena powers and using every possible tool to demand transparency to root out corruption at all levels,” Stefanik said.