Hunter set to appear for closed-door deposition in House impeachment probe on Biden’s role in foreign business relationships

WASHINGTON — Hunter Biden is set to appear Wednesday morning at a closed-door deposition in the House’s impeachment inquiry into President Biden’s role in foreign business relationships.

It is unclear how the 54-year-old first son, who regularly connected his dad to his business partners in countries such as China and Ukraine, intends to handle questioning by the House committees leading the probe. Panel investigators also have looked into an alleged Justice Department cover-up designed to shield Joe and Hunter Biden.

In a possible preview of his testimony, the first son gave a defiant 5-minute speech outside the Capitol on Dec. 13 as he flouted an initial subpoena and argued that his father was innocent of wrongdoing.

“Let me state as clearly as I can: my father was not financially involved in my business, not as a practicing lawyer, not as a board member of [Ukrainian energy company] Burisma, not in my partnership with a Chinese private businessman, not in my investments at home nor abroad and certainly not as an artist,” Hunter said at the time.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also said at the time that Joe Biden “was certainly familiar with what his son was going to say” as Hunter flouted the subpoena — potentially adding to an obstruction of Congress count against the president in possible articles of impeachment.

President Biden said repeatedly as a candidate during the 2020 election that he “never” discussed business with Hunter or the commander in chief’s brother James Biden and in December maintained he “did not” interact with their associates — despite evidence that he repeatedly did so.

Emails, witness testimony and even photos show Joe Biden met with his son’s associates from two Chinese government-linked business deals and others from Mexico, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine.

Many of those interactions occurred during Joe Biden’s vice presidency, when he oversaw US foreign policy toward those countries.

House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said ahead of Hunter’s testimony Wednesday that the first son’s deposition would not be the final step in the inquiry.

“This deposition is not the conclusion of the impeachment inquiry,” Comer said. “There are more subpoenas and witness interviews to come.”

Comer said the committees’ investigation has “unearthed a record of evidence revealing Joe Biden was ‘the brand’ his family sold to enrich the Bidens.

“Joe Biden knew of, participated in and benefited from these schemes,” Comer said.

“Joe Biden attended dinners, spoke on speakerphone, showed up to meetings and had coffee with his son’s foreign business associates.”

Hunter’s deposition will follow last week’s transcribed interview of first brother James, who partnered with Hunter in many foreign dealings. That interrogation failed to establish much new information.

It is possible Hunter will invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, citing pending tax fraud charges in Los Angeles and gun charges in Delaware.

Hunter’s appearance comes during uncertainty about the resolution of the inquest.

House Republicans hold a slim 219-212 majority, meaning they could afford to lose hardly any votes if articles of impeachment are brought to the floor for a vote. The party stuck together in December to retroactively authorize the inquiry after it opened without a vote in September.

In a dramatic twist in the inquiry, the Justice Department on Feb. 15 charged US-Israeli citizen Alexander Smirnov with lying to the FBI about purported conversations he had with Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky involving $10 million in alleged bribes to the Biden family.

House Republicans last year battled the FBI for access to an informant file containing those allegations, though they didn’t know Smirnov’s identity until he was criminally charged.

President Biden said Feb. 16 that the impeachment inquiry “should be dropped” after the informant was revealed to be an alleged liar.

“It should be dropped, and it’s just been an outrageous effort from the beginning,” he said.

EVIDENCE DEVELOPED TO DATE

Corroborated evidence in the case has come from IRS whistleblowers who investigated the first family, files on Hunter’s abandoned laptop and testimony from business partners involved in various dealings.

Former Biden family business partner Rob Walker testified Jan. 26 that $3 million in funds from Chinese state-linked CEFC China Energy flowed to him in March 2017 — with about a third going to the Bidens — shortly after Joe Biden met CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming at DC’s Four Seasons hotel.

Walker said the money, dispatched just weeks after Joe Biden left office as vice president, was a “thank you” for preliminary services sourcing business opportunities in a relationship that began in 2015.

A May 2017 email written by Biden family associate James Gilliar also penciled in the “big guy” — Joe Biden — for a 10% cut in a proposed joint venture with CEFC.

The future president was later invoked by his son in July 2017 in a threatening text message to a China-based associate warning he was “sitting here with my father,” according to records provided to Congress by IRS case agent Joseph Ziegler, a self-identified Democrat who alleged his team was repeatedly blocked from following leads regarding President Biden.

Within 10 days of the threatening message, $5.1 million flowed to accounts linked to Hunter and James Biden, according to information in a 2020 report by Republican-led Senate committees.

Hunter and James Biden worked with CEFC on ultimately unsuccessful efforts by the firm to get involved in the US natural gas industry, the first brother confirmed in his own testimony.

As part of a previous Chinese state-backed venture, then-VP Joe Biden also was introduced by his son and had coffee with Jonathan Li, the incoming CEO of BHR Partners, during a December 2013 trip to Beijing, former Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer testified July 31.

Archer said Joe Biden later greeted Li on speaker phone during a subsequent trip by Hunter to China. The VP also wrote college recommendation letters for both of Li’s children.

BHR Partners, which like CEFC sought out foreign resources for China, such as cobalt for electric car batteries, was official registered as a company within two weeks of the visit, the Wall Street Journal reported. Hunter held onto a 10% stake in the firm through at least part of his father’s term as president.

Joe Biden as VP also joined two separate dinners at a DC’s Cafe Milano — in 2014 and 2015 — with his son’s Kazakhstani, Russian and Ukrainian patrons, Archer said. Only one of those meetings was known from laptop files and witness corroboration before his testimony, and Archer dismissed claims that Joe Biden only briefly appeared.

Dinner guests included former first lady of Moscow Yelena Baturina, who transferred $3.5 million to a Hunter Biden-linked entity in early 2014 and separately invested more than $100 million with Archer’s Rosemont Realty, with which Hunter Biden also was briefly associated.

House Republicans have scrutinized President Biden’s decision to leave Baturina off a growing list of Russian business leaders facing US sanctions over the two-year Russia-Ukraine war.

Convicted fraudster Jason Galanis told House investigators in a prison interview Friday that he was present for a Brooklyn gathering in May 2014 where Hunter put his father on speaker phone with Baturina.

Kazakhstani businessman Kenes Rakishev, who purchased Hunter a $142,000 sports car, also dined with Joe Biden and posed for a group photo with him.

Vadym Pozharsky, board adviser to Ukrainian gas company Burisma, which paid Hunter up to $1 million per year beginning in 2014 when his father led US policy toward Ukraine after an anti-Russian uprising, wrote Hunter an email the next day after the 2015 dinner thanking him for the opportunity to meet his father.

Archer additionally alleged that Hunter Biden stepped away from a gathering at the Four Seasons in Dubai in December 2015 to “call DC” with Zlochevsky and Pozharsky — shortly before the vice president abruptly threatened to deny a $1 billion US loan guarantee to Kyiv as leverage to force the ouster of Ukrainian prosecutor-general Viktor Shokin, who seized assets from Burisma’s owner shortly before he was fired.

In November 2015, Joe Biden also hosted at his vice president’s residence and gave a White House tour to Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim and members of the wealthy Mexican Aleman family, whom Hunter Biden and his associate Jeff Cooper courted with energy and technology pitches.

Joe Biden is pictured at the VP’s residence with Cooper, Hunter, Slim, Miguel Alemán Velasco and his son Miguel Aleman Magnani, the founder of the airline Interjet.

Hunter stayed for free at a vacation property owned by Aleman Magnani and helped set up meetings for him with Obama-Biden administration aides including Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx and the administrator of the Federal Aviation Authority.

Hunter later complained bitterly to Aleman Magnani about the lack of additional reciprocal favors after “I have brought every single person you have ever asked me to bring to the F’ing White House and the Vice President’s house and the inauguration” — in a message apparently written as Hunter and Cooper rode with Joe Biden aboard Air Force Two for a 2016 official trip to Mexico.

The first son is facing potential prison time for gun violations in Delaware and tax fraud in Los Angeles after walking away in July from a probation-only plea deal over courtroom demands for assurances of immunity for other past conduct, such as alleged violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which could implicate his father.

His Los Angeles trial is scheduled to begin June 20.

The White House and Hunter Biden’s legal team did not immediately respond to requests for comment.