Hunter Biden investigation can be the start of a crackdown on White House influence peddling

Getting a clearer picture of the evidence against Hunter Biden will make it easier to compare his activities to those of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump
If the US is starting to prosecute the sale of White House influence for financial gain, it’s a matter of time before they are all in the legal spotlight

Robert Delaney

Published: 1:00am, 15 Aug 2023

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Now that US Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to investigate the financial dealings of President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden, we should expect to see details of the younger Biden’s transactions with Chinese companies pulled back into the headlines.

Starting in 2017 and over the course of about 14 months, the Shanghai-based energy conglomerate CEFC China Energy and its executives paid US$4.8 million to entities controlled by or somehow connected to Hunter Biden. These details, along with those relating to the president’s son’s membership on the board of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma while the senior Biden was vice-president, have been public for years.

In 2020, Senate Republicans produced an extensive report on them, which highlighted what they called “a vast web of corporate connections and financial transactions between and among the Biden family and Chinese nationals”.

These payments and every other detail of Biden’s life have also been picked over for more than five years by David Weiss, a federal prosecutor who was appointed by former president Donald Trump. Weiss was tapped by Garland to lead the renewed investigation, in the wake of the collapse last month of a plea deal with Hunter Biden.

Given how greatly Americans’ suspicion of China has grown in recent years and become a top cause for lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle, it seemed inevitable that his dealings in the country would turn into an explosive story. And yet they didn’t, and not because – as some Republicans insist – the US mainstream media is conspiring to protect the Biden family.

Influence peddling is as old as politics. If a Trump-appointed prosecutor was unable to find anything that violated laws in Hunter Biden’s foray into these age-old practices, the matter was never going to stay above the fold.

US Attorney David Weiss speaks during a press conference on May 3, 2018, at his district office in Wilmington, Delaware. Photo: AP

And if Weiss’s investigation as a newly appointed special prosecutor leads to charges that Hunter Biden profited illegally from his proximity to American executive power, then he is guilty of activity in which Trump’s own daughter and son-in-law appear to have been engaged.

Are we supposed to believe that the Saudi government’s US$2 billion investment in Jared Kushner’s investment firm six months after Trump left office had nothing to do with the many trips that Kushner took to Riyadh on Air Force One?

What was it about Kushner’s career as a financier that would compel the Saudi government to make him a steward of a portion of the kingdom’s wealth? Was there anything compelling enough to dispel any suspicion of a political quid pro quo as US-Saudi relations improved under Trump?

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In the absence of any examples of deft financial acumen, we are left with the conclusion that the relations he developed with the House of Saud helped to bring the business to Kushner’s firm. And what to make of China’s Trademark Office granting dozens of trademarks to Ivanka Trump Marks LLC while her father was in office?

If anything, we have to wonder how Hunter Biden managed only to pull a few million dollars – barely even a rounding error in the grand scheme of US-China investment flows during those years – from his Chinese business interests. As China’s economy surged and looked on course to eclipse that of the United States, everyone involved in international business wanted any cut of the business they could get. In any other context, Trump would be laughing at such meagre returns.

This is not to say that Hunter Biden’s activities should go without punishment if a court determines they were over a legal line. If we are finally going after the family members of government officials who are trading in that influence, we need to start somewhere.

Then US president Donald Trump (centre) and then White House senior adviser Jared Kushner meet Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (left) at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on May 20, 2017. Photo: Reuters

Unless something new and particularly damning about Hunter Biden’s dealings with China, or anything else in his background, emerges in Weiss’s investigation, this can only work out in Biden’s favour. This is particularly so because Trump and his family members cannot argue they have not leveraged the former president’s political clout for financial gain.

Now that Weiss has been elevated to special prosecutor, we will get a clearer picture of the evidence against the current president’s son. That will make it easier to compare this activity against that of Kushner and Ivanka Trump.

If the US is starting to prosecute the sale of White House influence for financial gain, it’s just a matter of time before they are in the legal spotlight.

Robert Delaney is the Post’s North America bureau chief