WASHINGTON — Who are you going to believe, the White House or your lying eyes?
Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre insisted Thursday that President Biden “isn’t lying about anything” regarding his interactions with his family’s foreign business partners, a day after the House voted to authorize an investigation. of impeachment amid a mountain of evidence that the commander in chief has in fact been false.
“Can you explain to people why the president interacted with so many foreign associates of his relatives and why he continues to deny any interaction? How should people think about this? The Post asked Jean Pierre in its regular briefing.
“What we are seeing from House Republicans is a waste of time and certainly a baseless political stunt,” Jean-Pierre responded after all Republicans supported the creation of the investigation to force testimony. and the disclosure of documents.
“House Republicans are leaving this week for a nice vacation, as most Americans should, but what happened to Ukraine? … They have not been able to achieve it,” he added. “They have not been able to help us fix what is happening at the border, they have not been able to do it. They have not been able to start a conversation about how we are going to avoid a shutdown in January.
“There has been no evidence, no evidence. “You can ask me about the engagement and what the president has done with his family in conversations, but there is no evidence,” he continued.
The White House said President Biden “doesn’t lie about anything” regarding his interactions with his family’s foreign business partners. AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
“There is no evidence that the president has committed any crime, there is none. Absolutely none, none! And that’s just a fact. You’ve heard it from the Republicans themselves. Then they are wasting their time. Instead of doing the job on behalf of the American people, they go after the president’s family. But that’s a waste of time.”
“Is there an easy way to counter the central message,” The Post continued, “that the president interacted with associates and has been lying about it ever since?”
“The president is not lying about anything when it comes to what House Republicans are trying to do,” Jean-Pierre responded. “It has no basis, it is a political trick and it has not proven that the president has done anything wrong, nothing wrong. And that’s why they’re wasting their time. “They are wasting the American people’s time.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called the impeachment inquiry a “baseless political stunt.” AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
The White House stuck to Biden’s long-standing refusal to make contact a day after his first son, Hunter Biden, appeared to offer a newly crafted framing of the elder Biden’s role, saying Wednesday that “my father was not financially involved in my business,” an eye-catching update from the White House. House’s statement this summer that Biden “never did business with his son.”
That framework was itself an evolution of Biden’s campaign claim that “I have never discussed, with my son or my brother or anyone else, anything having to do with their businesses.”
Biden, 81, has steadfastly denied any contact with his relatives’ foreign business partners, despite evidence that he met while vice president with associates of Hunter and his first brother James Biden of China, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Russia and Ukraine, plus many of his Contacts in the US.
The president told The Post last week that he did not interact with any of his son or brother’s associates, saying, “I didn’t. And they’re just a bunch of lies. Are lies”.
Hunter Biden said his father was not “financially involved” in his businesses. Rod Lamkey – CNP
Republicans responded that Biden was the one lying. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) tweeted, “The president just lied to the American people again. FACT: There are at least 22 examples of Joe Biden speaking or meeting with foreign business partners of Hunter Biden.”
There is documentation that Biden was involved in his relatives’ foreign affairs from at least 2011 until after he stepped down as vice president in 2017.
Joe Biden wrote a letter to Hunter’s business partner, Devon Archer, in 2011 thanking him for attending a Chinese state luncheon in Washington and expressing his satisfaction that Archer and Hunter Biden were in business.
The then-vice president subsequently was on speaker for about 20 of Hunter’s foreign business meetings and participated in two dinners at D.C.’s Café Milano, in 2014 and 2015, with his son’s Kazakh, Russian and Ukrainian clients. Archer testified July 31 before the House Oversight Committee. .
Among the dinner guests was Moscow’s former first lady Yelena Baturina, who transferred $3.5 million to an entity linked to Hunter Biden in early 2014 and separately invested $100 million in Archer’s Rosemont Realty, with which Hunter Biden was briefly associated.
Kazakh businessman Kenes Rakishev, who bought his then second son a $142,000 sports car, also had dinner with Joe Biden and posed for a group photo with him.
Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of directors of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings, who paid Hunter up to $1 million a year starting in 2014, when his father took control of US policy toward Ukraine, wrote to Hunter a thank you email the next day for the opportunity to meet. his father
Joe and Hunter Biden with Kenes Rakishev and Karim Massimov. kiar
Archer also testified that Hunter Biden walked away from a meeting at the Four Seasons in Dubai to “call DC” with Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky and Pozharskyi in December 2015.
An FBI informant file released in July by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) says Zlochevsky complained in 2016 that he was “forced” to pay $10 million in bribes to Joe and Hunter Biden in exchange for help. of the then vice president to overthrow Ukraine’s attorney general, Viktor Shokin, who was removed from office in March following a sustained campaign by Joe Biden. The bribery allegation has not been proven.
In other contacts, in November 2015, Joe Biden received Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim and members of the wealthy Mexican Alemán family, whom Hunter Biden and his partner Jeff Cooper courted with energy and technology presentations, at the official residence of the vice president and He gave them a white gift. Visit to the house.
Joe Biden appears at the vice president’s residence with Cooper, Hunter Biden, Carlos Slim, Miguel Alemán Velasco and his son Miguel Alemán Magnani, founder of the airline Interjet.
In China, Archer also said that Joe Biden had coffee, rather than a handshake as previously reported, in December 2013 with Jonathan Li, the incoming chief executive of Chinese state investment fund BHR Partners, which Hunter co-founded shortly after. weeks after joining his father aboard Air. Force Two for a trip to Beijing.
The then-second son put Joe Biden on speakerphone with Li during a subsequent Hunter business trip to China, Archer said, and Joe Biden wrote college recommendation letters for Li’s children.
Hunter Biden maintained a 10% stake in BHR for at least part of his father’s first year in office as president, and the terms of his divestment remain unclear.
As part of a subsequent Chinese venture with state-owned CEFC China Energy, Joe Biden reportedly met his son and brother’s partners twice and was even branded the “big guy” due to a 10% cut, as It is documented in a May 2017 email months after stepping down as vice president. Joe Biden was also mentioned in an October 2017 email about the CEFC’s attempt to purchase American natural gas.
As part of the same Chinese business relationship, Hunter sent a threatening WhatsApp message on July 30, 2017 to a China-based associate warning that he was “sitting here with my father” and threatening retaliation if the deal was canceled, immediately before transfer. of $5.1 million from CEFC to accounts linked to Biden, in addition to the $1 million sent in March of that year, shortly after Biden left office.
IRS Supervisory Agent Gary Shapley, who this year came forward to allege a cover-up in Hunter Biden’s criminal tax fraud investigation, said Thursday in an interview with Fox News that he believes Joe Biden’s mere presence during Commercial interactions allowed their relatives to sign agreements.
“What President Biden was basically doing through Hunter Biden was allowing Hunter Biden to get these deals where there was no real discernible product being produced, so it’s really just influence peddling,” Shapley said, who supervised the investigation for three years. “Just sitting in a business meeting, at a lunch, drinking water, that’s all Hunter Biden needed to use that influence.”
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