The Biden family raked in upwards of $20 million from foreign business partners during the Obama administration, according to new records out Wednesday.
According to financial documents released by the House Oversight Committee, President Joe Biden’s son Hunter ran the family influence-peddling scheme by funneling money across a series of shell companies to conceal “the source and size of the payments.” The records released Wednesday reveal large payments from oligarchs in Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan.
“It appears no real services were provided other than access to the Biden network, including Joe Biden himself,” said House Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky. “It’s clear Joe Biden knew about his son’s business dealings and allowed himself to be ‘the brand’ sold to enrich the Biden family while he was Vice President of the United States.”
Last week, former Biden family business partner Devon Archer detailed the family influence-peddling operation in testimony before the Oversight Committee. Archer, the co-founder of Hunter Biden’s firm, Rosemont Seneca, told lawmakers that foreign oligarchs hired the president’s son to buy immediate access to Washington politicians including Joe Biden himself, gain the Biden “brand,” and intimidate enemies.
“I think at the end of the day, part of what was delivered is the brand,” Archer said. “I mean, it’s like anything, you know, if you’re Jamie Dimon’s son or any CEO. You know, I think that’s what we’re talking about, is that there was brand being delivered along with other capabilities and reach. … I think ‘brand’ is the best way to describe it.”
Archer told the committee Joe Biden spoke with his son’s associates at least 20 times, contradicting Democrats and Biden’s own denials of any involvement from 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023. Other records indicate, however, that President Biden interacted with family business partners more than 200 times. On the campaign trail in 2019, the former vice president even fat-shamed an Iowa voter who brought up Hunter Biden’s tenure on the board of Burisma, an energy company in Ukraine.
The records released on Wednesday show Archer and Hunter Biden were hired on Burisma’s board in 2014, and each received at least $1 million a year. The payout was far above comparable board compensation, particularly for Hunter Biden, who held no prior experience in the industry. Hunter’s father, however, served as the Obama administration’s point man on Ukraine.
Archer told lawmakers Hunter was hired “because people would be intimidated to mess with [Burisma].” Indeed, the firm was under investigation by Ukraine’s top prosecutor. In 2018, Joe Biden bragged about pressuring the Ukrainian government to fire the prosecutor investigating his son’s firm.
[Evidence Of Biden Burisma Corruption Is Overwhelming]
Records from the House Oversight Committee show the Bidens raked in cash from foreign sources in incremental payments to different bank accounts. For instance, congressional investigators highlighted a 2014 payment from a Kazakhstani oligarch who wired the “exact price” of a sportscar the Bidens purchased for $142,300.
Archer and Hunter Biden’s firm Rosemont Seneca also received $3.5 million from Yelena Baturina, the widow of an ex-mayor of Moscow. The payment was previously revealed by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee with the Senate Finance Committee in an explosive September 2020 report. Archer told lawmakers last week that he, Baturina, and the Bidens had dinner at Washington, D.C.’s Cafe Milano just months after the wire transfer. The House Oversight report on Wednesday points out Baturina was notably absent from a public sanctions list unveiled shortly following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year.
Wednesday’s release is the third installment of bank records from the committee. The second installment, published in May, revealed the Biden family raked in at least $10 million from foreign corporations under the Obama administration, with the payments scattered across 20 companies to dilute them.
The prior bank records focused on payments from China and Romania. At least nine members of the Biden family profited from the money.