Author Peter Schweizer on Monday unveiled what many are calling a legal "game-changer" in the Biden family bribery scandal.
Schweizer, who heads the Government Accountability Institute and is author of the new book, "Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win", noted in a social media post that, according to what the law says about bribery (18 USC 201), it doesn't matter if Joe Biden "may or may not have been paid. But if his family got paid for official acts, that's still bribery."
The statute states: "(1)directly or indirectly, corruptly gives, offers or promises anything of value to any public official or person who has been selected to be a public official, or offers or promises any public official or any person who has been selected to be a public official to give anything of value to any other person or entity, with intent."
Revolver News noted: "The propaganda media is busy trying to pin all of this on Joe’s crackhead son Hunter, the lowly 'bag man' of the family. However, Peter (Schweizer) just dropped a legal bombshell on the entire case. Despite the Left’s efforts to protect Joe by portraying Hunter as the sole wrongdoer, who clumsily 'tried' but failed to sell the 'appearance' of influence with his father, Peter argues that it doesn’t matter. Because when you actually examine what the law says about bribery, Joe Biden’s goose is already cooked."
As the New York Post reported in July, an FBI informant file which describes a $10 million bribery allegation against Joe Biden and his son Hunter was released by Sen. Chuck Grassley, showing that a Ukrainian oligarch claimed that he was “coerced” into making the payoff.
Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of natural gas company Burisma Holdings, told the FBI informant in 2016 while meeting at a coffee shop in Vienna, Austria, that “it cost 5 [million] to pay one Biden, and 5 [million] to another Biden,” according to the redacted FD-1023 form.
“Zlochevsky made some comment that although Hunter Biden ‘was stupid, and his (Zlochevsky’s) dog was smarter,’ Zlochevsky needed to keep Hunter Biden (on Burisma’s board) ‘so everything will be okay,’” the June 2020 document says.
The source asked whether Hunter Biden or Joe Biden told Zlochevsky he should “retain” the younger Biden; Zlochevsky allegedly replied, “They both did.”
The federal informant — a Ukrainian-American who has been a trusted, highly credible FBI source for over a decade and been paid “six figures,” according to Grassley — described four conversations with Zlochevsky, beginning with a meeting near Kyiv in late 2015 or early 2016 and continuing through a 2019 phone call.
The informant said each of his conversations with Zlochevsky occurred in the presence of a man named Alexander Ostapenko — giving the FBI a possible supporting witness.
Hunter Biden's business partner and fellow Burisma board member Devon Archer divulged in congressional testimony that, on several occasions, Hunter Biden arranged direct access for business partners to Joe Biden when he was vice president. Some of the meetings occurred on phone calls; others at the swanky Cafe Milano restaurant in Washington D.C.
One meeting in 2015, Archer testified, was held in the personal residence of the vice president and that meeting "is taking on more significance for House investigators for the specificity of the conversation and the secretive nature of the gathering," Just the News reported on Sept. 13.
At the meeting, Hunter Biden delivered face time between Joe Biden, Archer, and an international banker they were courting for business in Kazakhstan.
The official entry logs released by the Obama administration do not show businessman/banker Marc Holtzman, Archer or Hunter Biden attending together at the Naval Observatory in 2015.
But Archer confirmed the meeting occurred, and detailed the nature of the conversation: Holtzman wanted to advocate for former Kazakh Prime Minister Karim Massimov – today imprisoned in his country on treason charges – to become the next United Nations Secretary General.
Hunter Biden and Archer hoped Holtzman – then the top official at Kazakhstan’s largest bank – could help deliver an energy deal for their Burisma client in Ukraine with Kazakhstan. Joe Biden was in a position to influence both.
“It was, like, a U.N.-related conversation,” Archer told congressional investigators about the Naval Observatory breakfast.
“Who was present?,” he was asked.
“A gentleman named Marc Holtzman, myself, Hunter, and the Vice President,” he answered.
“And what was the discussion about?” investigators pressed.
“It was about who was going to be the next UN Secretary-General … Marc Holtzman was lobbying for Karim Massimov. But it was, obviously, that didn't happen.”
Archer would go on to explain that Hunter Biden and he were interested in Massimov for another motive: trying to score a deal between Kazakhstan and Burisma known as the "Burisma Eurasia" deal.
“The other reasons for Massimov were Burisma Eurasia, because he was the Prime Minister, and Burisma was trying to expand its businesses, so I leveraged the relationship to introduce him to the company – the country and new equipment and technology and clean drilling. So that was – that was probably some of the effort.”
Emails on Hunter Biden’s laptop chronicle some of the dealings with Holtzman, Massimov and other figures in Kazakhstan and Ukraine – including an effort to get someone in Joe Biden’s orbit to sign a letter congratulating the Kazakh banker.
Just the News noted other instances in which Hunter Biden provided direct access to the vice president for his business partners and associates (Joe Biden has long insisted that he in no way participated in his son's foreign business dealings):
• Hunter Biden acknowledged to the The New Yorker magazine that in December 2013 he introduced then-Vice President Biden to his business associate, Jonathan Li, in the lobby of the hotel in which they were staying during an official visit to Beijing.
“How do I go to Beijing, halfway around the world, and not see them for a cup of coffee?” Biden told the magazine, referring to his business partners.Li is a Chinese businessman who ran the firm Bohai Capital. At the time of then-Vice President Biden’s visit to China, Li and Hunter Biden were already working on forming a new investment company that brought together Chinese capital with Hunter Biden's existing business enterprises.
Before the trip to Beijing, Li, Archer and Hunter Biden signed a memorandum of understanding to form a company named BHR Partners. Twelve days after the trip and the meeting with the vice president, BHR Partners was officially registered in China, according to the Wall Street Journal.
• Miguel Alemán Velasco and son Miguel Alemán Magnani Jr. – descendants of a former Mexican president – both visited the White House in February 2014, according to White House visitor logs released by the Obama administration and news reports.
Velasco is a former senator and governor of the Mexican state of Veracruz and is an industrialist with ties to broadcast and aviation companies. His company Interjet was forced into bankruptcy after Velasco was held liable in 2022 by a Mexican court to pay 689.3 million pesos ($739,891,173 USD) for unpaid taxes.His son, Magnani, is as of 2021, living in exile in France to avoid the execution of an arrest warrant issued by Mexican authorities on tax fraud charges, according to Bloomberg News.
Hunter Biden worked closely with the Alemán family from 2014 to 2016, attempting to drum up business ventures in Mexico that would include roles for the Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holding Ltd., on whose board he served.
Joe Biden was captured on camera giving them a tour of the White House Brady Press Briefing room, shown in photographs published by The Daily Mail.
• As Just the News previously reported, then-Vice President Biden attended an April 2015 dinner that his son hosted at Café Milano that Burisma executive Vadim Pozharskyi attended, according to Archer’s testimony and an email from the Hunter Biden laptop, which he abandoned at a Delaware repair shop in 2019 and the content of which eventually was eventually made public.
President Biden's then-campaign senior adviser, now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken "played a role in the inception" in 2020 of a widely disseminated letter signed by 51 current and past intelligence officials claiming the Hunter Biden laptop was not to be given credence, being part of a "Russian disinformation campaign." Hunter Biden later denied knowing if the laptop was even his.After the "Russian disinformation" narrative fell apart, in an remarkable about face in March of this year, not only did Hunter Biden claim that the laptop was legitimate and was indeed his, but even sued the repair shop owner for "trying to invade his privacy and wrongfully sharing his personal data for political purposes" according to CNN.
Hunter Biden was making $1 million a year in fees from Burisma at the time for his service on the board.
• In April 2014, Russian oligarch Yelena Baturina dined with Hunter Biden and the vice president at the same Café Milano, weeks after she “deposited $3.5 million into a bank account tied to Hunter Biden’s businesses and committed to invest in a New York real estate project with Biden’s partners,” as Just the News previously reported.
Notably, the Biden administration’s public sanctions list for Russian oligarchs does not include Baturina.Read what the law says about bribery (18 USC 201). Joe Biden may or may not have been paid. But if his family got paid for official acts, that's still bribery: "(1)directly or indirectly, corruptly gives, offers or promises anything of value to any public official or person who…
— Peter Schweizer (@peterschweizer) September 18, 2023
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