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Hunter Biden joined his father on Air Force One on Wednesday for a flight to Kiawah Island, South Carolina, for a family vacation. This happened as Republicans criticized the FBI for having a 'double standard' by raiding the home of former President Trump but not either of the Bidens' homes.
Hunter Biden often worked with his father Joe on business deals in other countries. He is being investigated by the federal government for tax fraud, money laundering, and lobbying without a license, but there is no evidence that either father or son have been raided by the FBI as part of this long-running investigation.
Hunter Biden, age 52, his wife Melissa Cohen, and his young son Beau met the president at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland for the flight. This was just two days after the FBI served a search warrant at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, reportedly to get presidential records that may contain classified information.
Trump called the raid "political targeting at the highest level," but the Justice Department hasn't said much about it, and the White House says Biden didn't know about it ahead of time. Trump turned down the nomination of Attorney General Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. Garland is in charge of the FBI.
Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, said that the difference in how the FBI treated Trump and the Bidens showed a "Banana Republic" style of law.
“The raid of [Mar-a-Lago] is another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents, while people like Hunter Biden get treated with kid gloves,” DeSantis tweeted.
The raid of MAL is another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents, while people like Hunter Biden get treated with kid gloves. Now the Regime is getting another 87k IRS agents to wield against its adversaries? Banana Republic.
— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantisFL) August 9, 2022
Mike Pompeo, who used to be Secretary of State, tweeted on Tuesday, "Look at what the DOJ did to President Trump last night, while it slows down and ignores Hunter Biden."
Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) wrote on Twitter, "The raid on President Trump's home sets a dangerous precedent and takes the targeting of political opponents to an alarming new level. It also shows that Hunter Biden was given a free pass, which is a clear sign of double standards."
Rep. Connie Conway (R-Calif.) wrote, "The FBI treats Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden differently than they treat Donald Trump, his friends, and even parents who speak up at school board meetings. Americans are losing faith in the FBI because they know that justice that is influenced by politics is not justice at all.
Trump's lawyers have not given out a copy of the FBI search warrant, which could explain why the raid happened. The former president is reportedly being looked into not only how he handled federal records, but also how he tried to challenge his loss in the 2020 election.
The investigation into Hunter Biden, on the other hand, has moved slowly.
The FBI has had a computer hard drive that used to belong to Hunter Biden since December 2019. Documents on the device show how much money he made from his business overseas. This goes against what Joe Biden said in September 2019 when he said, "I've never talked to my son about his business overseas."
John Paul Mac Isaac, a computer repairman in Delaware, gave the laptop to the FBI almost a year before The Post revealed some of its bombshell contents in October 2020. These included proof that Hunter Biden introduced his vice-president father to an executive from Ukrainian gas company Burisma, which paid the then-second son as much as $1 million per year to serve on its board, and emails about a proposed Chinese business deal that said the "big guy" would get a 10% cut.
Hunter Biden recently gave the IRS about $2 million to make up for not paying taxes on a windfall of foreign income. Reports say that Hollywood lawyer Kevin Morris gave the money, but it's not clear what conditions were put on it, and paying back the money doesn't stop the prosecution.
This year, the first son's business dealings overseas got a lot of attention when the Washington Post and the New York Times checked out documents from a laptop in March.
Before the 2020 election, 51 former intelligence community leaders, including five former CIA directors, said the cache of documents could be Russian disinformation. Both Twitter and Facebook blocked The Post's reporting, with Twitter saying without evidence that the documents may have been "hacked."
Republicans in Congress say that if they win the midterm elections in November, they will look into the business interests of the Biden family and the president's ties to them.
Joe Biden's role in his son's business deals is usually unclear, and it would be hard to find out if they kept working together because Biden doesn't release visitor logs for his Delaware homes, where he spent about a quarter of his first year in office.
Emails from Hunter Biden's laptop show that, as vice president, Joe Biden went to a dinner in Washington, DC in 2015 with a group of his son's friends from Ukraine, Russia, and Kazakhstan. Joe Biden posed for a picture with the Kazakhstani group, and the next day, an executive at Burisma, Vadym Pozharskyi, emailed the then-second son to thank him for the chance to meet his father.
Yelena Baturina, a Russian billionaire and the widow of a former mayor of Moscow who is said to have been at the 2015 dinner, has not been hit with US sanctions this year for Russia's invasion of Ukraine, even though Biden has sanctioned many other members of Russia's elite.
Joe Biden may have had something to do with his son's business in China with CEFC China Energy, which paid Hunter Biden and his uncle Jim Biden $4.8 million in 2017 and 2018. This is according to the Washington Post.
Tony Bobulinski, who used to do business with Hunter Biden, says he talked to Joe Biden about the CEFC deal in May 2017. An email from May 13, 2017, says that the "big guy" would get a 10% stake in a new company. James Gilliar, who wrote that email, and Bobulinski both called the president the "big guy."
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. Hunter even put Joe Biden in touch with Jonathan Li, the CEO of BHR, in the lobby of a hotel in Beijing, China.
Part of BHR Partners is run by companies owned by the Chinese government. Hunter Biden's lawyer, Chris Clark, said that the first son sold his 10% stake in BHR Partners less than a week after President Biden met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in November. However, neither Hunter Biden nor the White House gave any more information, and online business records show that Hunter Biden still owns the 10% stake.
Joe Biden has also looked like he was helping his son's business on other occasions.
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 his 2020 impeachment trial for pressuring Ukraine to investigate the Bidens, Trump's defense team will use visitor logs to show that Joe Biden met with his son's partner Devon Archer on April 16, 2014, around the time that both Hunter Biden and Archer joined the Burisma board.
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.