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Hunter Biden celebrates July 4 with his father while the federal investigation continues

Hunter Biden, the first son of President Joe Biden, celebrated the Fourth of July with his father on Monday, even though a federal criminal investigation into possible tax fraud, money laundering, and foreign lobbying crimes related to his business deals overseas is still going on.

The 52-year-old Biden joined his father on Marine One as the presidential helicopter flew from Camp David, Maryland, back to Washington, DC. He was seen with his young son Beau at the White House Easter Egg Roll in mid-April.

The White House doesn't release visitor logs from the president's Delaware homes, where he often spends weekends, or Camp David. This makes it hard to know how often Hunter Biden and his business partners see his father.

Hunter Biden's finances are being looked into by the US attorney's office in Delaware. Reports say that the first son sent the IRS a check for about $2 million to make up for the fact that he didn't pay his taxes. It is said that Hollywood lawyer Kevin Morris gave the money, but it is not clear what conditions are attached.

This year, the first son's business dealings overseas got a lot of attention when the Washington Post and the New York Times verified documents from a former Hunter Biden laptop in March. The documents were first reported by The Post in October 2020.

Hunter Biden, son of U.S. President Joe Biden, carries his son Beau, after exiting Marine One with the president and first lady at Fort McNair in Washington, U.S., July 4, 2022.
Hunter Biden carries his son, Beau, after exiting Marine One with the president and first lady.
REUTERS/Tom Brenner

House and Senate Republicans, on the other hand, say that if they win the midterm elections in November, they will look into whether President Biden was involved in his son's business.

This year, the White House said that President Biden is sticking to his 2019 claim that he had "never spoken" with Hunter Biden about "his overseas business dealings." This is despite mounting evidence to the contrary, such as a recently released 2018 voicemail in which Joe Biden mentioned a New York Times article about his son's Chinese business partner.

Emails from Hunter Biden's laptop also show that Joe Biden went to a dinner in DC in 2015 with his son's friends from Ukraine, Russia, and Kazakhstan when he was still vice president.

Melissa Cohen Biden walks with her husband Hunter Biden and their son Beau as they arrive with President Joe Biden at Ft. McNair aboard Marine One after spending the weekend at Camp David, Monday, July 4, 2022, in Washington.
The US attorney’s office in Delaware is investigating Hunter Biden’s finances.
AP/Evan Vucci

A picture from the dinner shows Joe Biden posing with the Kazakhstani group. One day after the party, Vadym Pozharskyi, a manager at the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, sent the then-second son an email thanking him for letting him meet his father. Hunter Biden reportedly made $1 million a year working on the board of Burisma while his dad was in charge of the Obama administration's policy toward Ukraine.

An email said that the Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina and her husband, the ex-mayor of Moscow, Yury Luzhkov, were also on the guest list. In 2020, Republican-led Senate committees wrote a report that said Baturina gave $3.5 million to a company with ties to Hunter Biden in 2014.

Even though Biden has sanctioned many other members of Russia's elite, the US has not yet put sanctions on Baturina for Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which has been going on for more than four months.

Joe Biden was also said to be involved with his son's business with CEFC China Energy, which paid Hunter Biden and his older brother Jim Biden $4.8 million in 2017 and 2018.

Tony Bobulinski, who used to work with Hunter Biden in business, says he talked to Joe Biden about the Chinese business in May 2017. In an email sent on May 13, 2017, it was said that the "big guy" would get a 10% stake in a business entity set up with CEFC.

Bobulinski says that the president was the "big guy," and emails show that in September 2017, Hunter Biden asked for a new sign and more keys for an office he was renting in DC's House of Sweden office building. The sign was supposed to say "The Biden Foundation and Hudson West (CEFC-US)," and the keys were for his father, Jill and Jim Biden, and a Chinese executive named Gongwen Dong. The agency in charge of the property, however, had a spokeswoman say that the sign was never changed and the keys were never picked up.

Hunter Biden also started an investment company in China called BHR Partners in 2013. This was less than two weeks after he went to Beijing with his father on Air Force Two.

Carlos Slim, Joe Biden, Miguel Aleman Velasco
Joe Biden poses with Mexican billionaires Carlos Slim, left, and Miguel Alemán Velasco.

Hunter put Joe Biden in touch with Jonathan Li, the CEO of BHR, in the lobby of a hotel in the capital of China. The fund is partly run by state-owned companies. In 2016, a US company sold Congolese cobalt to China Molybdenum for $3.8 billion with the help of the fund. Cobalt is an important part of the batteries that power electric cars.

Hunter Biden's lawyer, Chris Clark, said that the first son had sold a 10% stake in BHR Partners less than a week after President Biden met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in November. Hunter Biden and the White House didn't give any more information about who may have bought his share and for how much.

Photos and emails from Hunter Biden's laptop show that Joe Biden hosted his son and a group of Mexican business partners at the vice president's official residence in 2015. The older Biden posed for a picture with Hunter and a group that included Carlos Slim and Miguel Alemán Velasco, two Mexican billionaires.

Hunter Biden is said to have sent an email to one of his Mexican business partners while on an official trip to Mexico in 2016. In the email, he said, "I have brought every single person you have ever asked me to bring to the F'ing White House, the Vice President's house, and the inauguration, and I have gotten nothing in return."

Visitor logs show that Eric Schwerin, Hunter Biden's business partner, went to the White House and vice president's home at least 19 times while Joe Biden was vice president. This makes it harder to believe that Joe Biden didn't know about his son's business ventures.

At President Donald Trump's 2020 impeachment trial, his defense team showed that Biden met with his son's girlfriend Devon Archer on April 16, 2014. This was around the time that Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma, which was started by a corrupt pro-Russia oligarch named Mykola Zlochevsky. Pam Bondi, an attorney for Trump, said that Trump was right to put pressure on Ukraine to look into the Bidens because Joe Biden might have had something to do with the Burisma deal. Archer joined Burisma in the same month as Biden's son, but a few weeks earlier.

Hunter Biden has started making art since his father became president. He wants to sell his first works for as much as $500,000.

The White House came up with a plan to make these sales supposedly anonymous to stop possible influence-peddling. However, ethics experts say that the plan actually raises more concerns about corruption. Hunter got at least $375,000 last year for five prints he sold at a Hollywood art show where Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti was there. Garcetti was chosen by Hunter's father to be an ambassador. No one knows how many more sales he might have made.

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