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Hunter Biden’s pardon from President Biden on Sunday doesn’t only apply to his tax and gun charges but gives him sweeping immunity from prosecution dating back ten years to the time Biden served as Vice-President.
Hunter Biden’s pardon applies to offenses against the U.S. that Hunter Biden “has committed or may have committed” from Jan. 1, 2014 to Dec. 1, 2024 which encapsulates several controversies surrounding the president’s son and his overseas business dealings.
BURISMA
Hunter Biden earned millions of dollars serving on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma after joining the company as legal counsel in the spring of 2014 before being elevated to the Board of Directors later that year.
Biden has claimed he “didn’t stand to gain anything” from the position, which he was appointed to without any experience in the industry, but Republicans have long alleged that Hunter and his father engaged in influence pedaling through Burisma.
President Biden and Hunter Biden arrive in Syracuse, New York (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)
The Bidens were accused by Republicans of having “coerced” Burisma CEO Mykola Zlochevsky to pay them millions of dollars in exchange for their help in getting the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating the company fired during the Obama administration.
“Why 2014?” Fox News contributor Andy McCarthy wrote on FoxNews.com this week. “Well, the most damning evidence of the Biden family influence-peddling business occurred in the last years of Joe Biden’s term as vice president – specifically, 2014 through 2016. That, of course, is when the Burisma hijinks began. Indeed, Hunter’s board seat on the corrupt energy company’s board was so manifestly tied to his father’s political influence that, as soon as Biden left office in 2017, Burisma slashed Hunter’s compensation in half.”
In addition to the more than $50,000 a month then-Vice President Joe Biden’s son received while serving on Burisma’s board from April 2014 to April 2019, he was also apparently receiving lavish gifts from the company’s founder, according to emails from Hunter’s abandoned laptop that have been verified by Fox News Digital.
CHINA BUSINESS DEALINGS
The pardon from President Biden also encapsulates the timeline of Hunter Biden’s controversial business dealings in China which Republicans have suggested also embodies part of the alleged influence pedaling scheme that was part of the failed effort to impeach President Biden.
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President Joe Biden, wearing a Team USA jacket and walking with his son Hunter Biden, heads toward Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, July 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
The Biden family netted several million dollars from business dealings in China which began in the 2014-2016 years as part of Hunter Biden’s relationship with two Chinese companies, Bohai Harvest RST investment enterprise and CEFC.
The House Oversight Committee told Fox News Digital earlier this year that it can “now confirm Joe Biden met with nearly every foreign national who funneled money to his son, including Russian oligarch Yelena Baturina, Romanian oligarch Kenes Rakishev, Burisma’s corporate secretary Vadym Pozharsky, Jonathan Li of BHR, and CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming.”
Biden attended dinners at Washington D.C. restaurant Cafe Milano in Georgtown with Baturina, Rakishev and Pozharsky in 2014 and 2015. Biden also met with Li of BHR in China in 2013. Biden met with Ye at the meeting in 2017, according to testimony from Hunter Biden’s ex-business partners Rob Walker and Devon Archer.
The Biden’s connections with Chinese companies continued into 2017.
Joe Biden, on May 3, 2017, spoke at the conference, hosting “A Conversation with the 47th Vice President of the United States Joe Biden.”
Just days after the May 2, 2017, meeting, the now-infamous May 13, 2017, email, which included a discussion of “remuneration packages” for six people in a business deal with a Chinese energy firm. The email appeared to identify Biden as “Chair / Vice Chair depending on agreement with CEFC,” in a reference to now-bankrupt CEFC China Energy Co.
WHO ELSE MIGHT BIDEN PARDON AFTER HE SPARED HUNTER FROM SENTENCING?
Hunter Biden, son of U.S. President Joe Biden departs the J. Caleb Boggs Federal Building on June 03, 2024 in Wilmington, Delaware. Biden is standing trial for felony gun charges. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The email includes a note that “Hunter has some office expectations he will elaborate.” A proposed equity split references “20” for “H” and “10 held by H for the big guy?” with no further details.
Tony Bobulinski, who worked with Hunter Biden to create the joint-venture SinoHawk Holdings with Chinese energy company CEFC, and said he met with Joe Biden in 2017, provided “unshakeable” testimony behind closed doors at the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees earlier this year and claimed that President Biden was the “big guy” referenced in the messages.
Additionally, Hunter Biden demanded $10 million from a Chinese business associate to “further the interest” of his joint-venture with CEFC in 2017, saying that the “Bidens are the best I know at doing exactly” what the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party-linked firm wanted, according to a WhatsApp message House Oversight Committee.
FARA
Hunter Biden’s overseas ties have also sparked speculation that he violated public disclose laws under the Foreign Agents Registration Act by not registering as a foreign agent.
The Justice Department indirectly revealed that Hunter Biden was still under investigation for a potential violation of FARA during his first court appearance in July of last year, in which his “sweetheart” plea deal collapsed.
When asked by federal Judge Maryellen Noreika of the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware whether the government could bring a charge against Hunter Biden related to FARA, the DOJ prosecutor replied, “Yes.”
“Look for Jim Biden to be pardoned next,” author Peter Schweizer posted on X this week. “Remember: the family was still under investigation under FARA as the pardon comes down. Might have implicated Joe.”
ROMANIA
The Republican-led House Oversight Committee has scrutinized the Biden family’s alleged business dealings in Romania dating back to 2015.
“On September 28, 2015, Vice President Biden welcomed Romanian President Klaus Iohannis to the White House,” the House Oversight Committee’s website state’s.
“Within five weeks of this meeting, a Romanian businessman involved with a high-profile corruption prosecution in Romania, Gabriel Popoviciu, began depositing a Biden associate’s bank account, which ultimately made their way into Biden family accounts. Popoviciu made sixteen of the seventeen payments, totaling over $3 million, to the Biden associate account while Joe Biden was Vice President. Biden family accounts ultimately received approximately $1.038 million.”
Fox News Digital reported last year that President Biden’s ambassador to the European Union offered advice to Hunter Biden in 2016 on a Romanian “client” who was on trial for corruption at the time.
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Hunter Biden, son of U.S. President Joe Biden, departs a House Oversight Committee meeting on Capitol Hill. (Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images) (Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)
OTHER OVERSEAS BUSINESS DEALINGS
Republicans in Congress have taken issue with Hunter Biden’s business presence in other countries including Kazakhstan and Russia.
In 2014, according to the House Oversight Committee, a Kazakhstani oligarch “used his Singaporean entity, Novatus Holdings, to wire one of Hunter Biden’s Rosemont Seneca entities $142,300. The very next day—April 23, 2014—the Rosemont Seneca entity transferred the exact same amount of money to a car dealership for a car for Hunter Biden.”
Also in 2014, the committee has alleged that the Biden family and its associates received $3.5 million from Russia in payments from Baturina, Russia’s richest woman.
TAX AND GUN CHARGES
President Biden’s pardon of his son means that he will not face punishment after being convicted earlier this year of making a false statement in the purchase of a gun, making a false statement related to information required to be kept by a federally licensed gun dealer, and possession of a gun by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance.
In his tax case, Hunter faced another trial regarding three felony tax offenses and six misdemeanor tax offenses regarding the failure to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes. As jury selection was about to kick off in Los Angeles federal court in September, Hunter entered a surprise guilty plea.
“Setting aside the fact that President Biden repeatedly stated he would not pardon his son, what I find most troubling is the sweeping nature of this pardon,” Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski posted on X.
“Not only is Hunter Biden receiving clemency for multiple felony offenses—for crimes of which he was convicted and pleaded guilty to—he is also being granted immunity from any crimes he ‘has committed or may have committed’ over a more than ten-year period. This decision makes a mockery of our justice system. Everyone must be held accountable for their actions under the law.”
Both President Biden and Hunter Biden have long denied any allegations of impropriety or allegations of influence peddaling and in his statement pardoning Hunter, President Biden argued that his son was only prosecuted because of his last name.
“Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter,” Biden wrote in a statement. “From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted.”
The president went on to claim that his son was “treated differently” by prosecutors.
“Without aggravating factors like use in a crime, multiple purchases, or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser, people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form,” Biden added. “Those who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions, but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties, are typically given non-criminal resolutions. It is clear that Hunter was treated differently.”
Biden also referenced his son’s battle with addiction and blamed “raw politics” for the unraveling of Hunter’s plea deal.
“There has been an effort to break Hunter – who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution,” the 82-year-old father wrote. “In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me – and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”
Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman, Jessica Chasmar, and Emma Colton contributed to this report
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