Politics

FBI Meeting With Former Biden Family Business Partner, Senator Says

FBI HQ | Circa October 2005 | I, Aude [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY-SA 2.5 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], from Wikimedia Commons

The FBI is meeting Friday with a businessman who has come forward with a trove of documents related to the Biden family’s involvement in a deal with a Chinese energy company, according to Republican Sen. Ron Johnson.

Johnson said in a statement that lawyers for Tony Bobulinski informed him that the FBI had asked to meet with their client on Friday.

“I appreciate that the FBI has a job to do, I am glad they are finally taking an interest in these concerning financial matters our Committees have been investigating for months,” Johnson said in a statement.

Bobulinski was one of five partners in Oneida Holdings, a shell company formed in May 2017 with Hunter Biden, his uncle James Biden and two other businessmen. The partners intended to use Oneida to facilitate a deal with CEFC, a Chinese energy firm chaired by Ye Jianming, a businessman with ties to the Chinese government.

Bobulinski came forward Wednesday to confirm the authenticity of an email released last week that was found on a laptop purportedly belonging to Biden. He also claimed that the Bidens “aggressively leveraged” their family name to generate business with foreign companies.

The email, dated May 13, 2017 email, lays out details of the Oneida-CEFC partnership.

The document says that Hunter Biden was to receive a 20% equity stake in the partnership, and someone referred to as “the big guy” would hold a 10% share.

Bobulinski says that “the big guy” is Joe Biden. His comments could undercut two claims pushed by the Biden campaign and Democrats.

Joe Biden has denied that he was involved in his son’s business dealings. Bobulinski says that documents in his possession contradict that claim.

Bobulinski’s verification of the May 13, 2017 email also undermines Biden allies’ assertion that documents purported to be from Hunter Biden’s laptop are part of a Russian disinformation campaign. The New York Post has published several emails from a laptop that Biden allegedly left at a computer repair shop in April 2019.

Bobulinski is providing the Senate Homeland Security Committee, which is chaired by Johnson, with a trove of emails, text messages and business contracts related to the Oneida-CEFC deal.

The Daily Caller News Foundation has obtained the records.

According to one text message, Hunter Biden set up a meeting with his father and Bobulinski on May 2, 2017 to discuss the deal with the Chinese business company.

The deal involving Oneida Holdings and CEFC does not appear to have materialized. But Hunter and James Biden did end up doing business with the company a few months after the Oneida deal fell apart.

A report released by Johnson’s committee on Sept. 23 shows that companies affiliated with CEFC wired $5 million to a shell company in September 2017 that in turn wired $4.8 million to Hunter Biden’s law firm.

The report also said that Hunter Biden and an associate of Ye applied for a $100,000 line of credit through a shell company called Hudson West III. The report says that Hunter Biden, James Biden and James’ wife Sara maxed out the line of credit on airplane tickets, restaurants and hotels.

The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.