In a startling revelation, James Biden, the brother of former President Joe Biden, reportedly hired a retired Secret Service agent to investigate whether a Chinese client, suspected of bribery, had an arrest warrant against him.
This disclosure contradicts the testimony James Biden gave to Congress in a deposition last year.
As reported by The Washington Free Beacon, James Biden, in his deposition to House investigators in February 2024, stated that he had asked Dale Pupillo, a former Secret Service agent, to conduct a background check on Patrick Ho, an official with CEFC China Energy, in 2017. CEFC China Energy is a Chinese energy conglomerate with which James Biden and his nephew, Hunter Biden, had a multimillion-dollar consulting contract.
James Biden, who was warned about the potential perjury charges for lying during the interview, testified that the background check was merely a precautionary measure for his "own edification" before meeting with Hunter Biden and Ho in Hong Kong. He insisted that the background check was "not to inform or anything else."
When asked by House Republicans if the background check was to ascertain if there was a Federal investigation into Patrick Ho, James Biden responded, "I have no idea."
However, a recent report from the Department of Justice inspector general challenges this narrative. The report reveals that James Biden explicitly asked the private investigator in November 2017 to determine if the FBI had warrants against Ho.
The retired agent, referred to as "Retired USSS Agent-1" in the report, informed the FBI on October 25, 2021, that James Biden had told him that they had information from China suggesting Ho might be arrested. According to the report, James Biden stated that Ho wanted to travel to the United States for a CEFC event but was apprehensive about being arrested.
The agent informed James Biden that he could not find a warrant against Ho, but warned that warrants are "sensitive" and not always detectable by private investigators. The inspector general's report suggests that Ho decided to attend the CEFC event "after James Biden or another individual likely told Ho, relying on information provided by a private investigator, that it was safe for Ho to return to the United States."
Contrary to this, the FBI did have an arrest warrant against Ho and arrested him in New York on November 16, 2017, on charges of offering bribes to African officials for oil rights on behalf of CEFC. Ho was subsequently convicted and sentenced to three years in prison.
The inspector general's report raises questions about whether James Biden misled Congress about his efforts on behalf of Ho. It also reveals that the Biden administration obtained information that the former Presidents brother sought confidential government information to assist a corrupt Chinese business partner.
The unusual arrangement between the Biden family and CEFC has been under investigation. The company paid Hunter and James Biden more than $5 million in 2017 to scout out potential energy deals for the company in the United States.
CEFC chairman Ye Jianming gifted Hunter Biden a large diamond worth around $80,000 during a meeting in Miami in May 2017. After Hos arrest, CEFC paid Hunter Biden $1 million to represent Ho. Hunter Biden, who referred to Ho as "the fucking spy chief of China" in private messages, never appeared on behalf of Ho during his trial.
The question of whether James Biden lied to Congress may be irrelevant given that Joe Biden pardoned his younger brother on his final day in office. The elder Biden justified the controversial pardon, stating that his family had been "subjected to unrelenting attacks and threats, motivated solely by a desire to hurt me."
Joe Biden also pardoned Hunter on December 2, just days before the former first son was due to face sentencing on gun and tax fraud convictions.
The inspector general's report primarily focuses on the actions of Charles McGonigal, a former FBI counterintelligence official convicted of accepting bribes from an Albanian official identified as Dorian Ducka. McGonigal led the FBIs investigation into CEFC and informed Ducka, an adviser to CEFC, about the FBI investigation and pending arrests against CEFC officials.
The report does not speculate on how James Biden learned of concerns that Ho had an arrest warrant. However, it does reveal that James Biden provided his Secret Service contact with detailed information about the targets of the FBI probe.
The report also discloses that the retired agent wrote to a colleague that there were "Possibly 3 Chinese and 1 Israeli on the warrant." The FBI initially had warrants for other Chinese nationals besides Ho, as well as an Israeli-American energy consultant named Gal Luft.
Luft, who worked closely with Ho, told the FBI in a 2019 interview that someone within the federal government had tipped off CEFC about an active criminal investigation into the company in 2017. The Biden Justice Department indicted Luft on July 10, 2023, accusing him of working as a foreign agent of China and lying to the FBI during the 2019 interview.
James Biden and his attorney did not respond to requests for comment. Pupillo, who retired from the Secret Service in 2015, also did not respond to a request for comment. The inspector general's report leaves us with more questions than answers, casting a shadow over the actions of the Biden family and their dealings with CEFC.
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