Joe and Hunter Biden used a visit to Sandy Hook memorial service to set up secret meet with Chinese over $10m-a-year deal, new emails reveal

Hunter Biden used Joe Biden’s appearance at a Sandy Hook memorial service to arrange a meeting between his dad  and his Chinese business partners, new texts reveal.

The messages come from a fresh tranche of documents released by Congress on Wednesday, given to them by IRS agents who investigated the First Son.

On December 12, 2017 Hunter wrote on the Chinese messaging app WeChat to Liu Yadong, a top executive at Chinese oil giant CEFC, to arrange a meeting with his father.

‘Can you meet this evening early,’ Hunter wrote. ‘My father will be in New York also and he wants me to attend the Sandyhook memorial service with him and I would like him to meet you along with my uncle [Jim Biden] and then you and I can talk let me know if that works.’

‘No problem,’ Yadong replied. ‘Pls let me know where and when to meet.’

On December 12, 2017 Hunter wrote on the Chinese messaging app WeChat to Liu Yadong, a top executive at Chinese oil giant CEFC, to arrange a meeting with his father. ‘Can you meet this evening early,’ Hunter wrote. ‘My father will be in New York also’

The texts to set up a meeting with Joe came after months of negotiation about the Biden family’s involvement in the deal with the Chinese government-linked company, in exchange for $10 million a year.

Liu Yadong helped run CEFC’s sham charity, used by its chief Patrick Ho to funnel bribes to foreign officials. Ho was convicted of the bribery in 2018

In July 2017 Hunter sent ‘threatening’ texts to CEFC official Runlong Zhao demanding he follow through on the $10 million deal, and noting his father’s involvement.

‘I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,’ Hunter wrote, in text messages obtained by the IRS investigators and published by Congress last year.

Weeks later, on August 3, 2017, Hunter texted CEFC associate Gongwen ‘Kevin’ Dong that he wanted a ‘[$]10 M per annum budget’ and that ‘the Bidens are the best I know at doing exactly what the [CEFC] Chairman wants from this partnership.’

At the time Joe Biden held no government post. He had left the vice-presidency the previous year and wouldn’t be elected president until 2020. 

The new whistleblower documents released on Wednesday also appear to show that in November 2017, Hunter set up a group text conversation on the encrypted messaging app WhatsApp with his father and uncle, who was also a partner in his multi-million-dollar deal with CEFC.

Hunter marked one of the contacts in the three-person WhatsApp group as ‘Jim Biden’ and the other as ‘Dad’.

Along with Yadong’s WeChat messages about setting up a meeting with Joe, the House Ways and Means Committee published a photo of Yadong’s business card, which describes him as CEO of CEFC Global Strategic Holdings, with an address at the United Nations Plaza in New York City.

Yadong helped run CEFC’s sham charity, used by its chief Patrick Ho to funnel bribes to foreign officials. Ho was convicted of the bribery in 2018.

Joe Biden was in New York at the Plaza Hotel along with singer Sheryl Crow in December 2017 for a five-year anniversary memorial for the victims of the Sandy Hook  school shooting in Connecticut

The five-year anniversary memorial of the Sandy Hook shooting took place at the Plaza Hotel in New York City in 2017. Joe Biden attended 

Along with Yadong’s WeChat messages about setting up a meeting with Joe, the House Ways and Means Committee published a photo of Yadong’s business card 

On August 3, 2017, Hunter texted CEFC associate Gongwen ‘Kevin’ Dong that ‘the Bidens are the best I know at doing exactly what the [CEFC] Chairman wants from this partnership’

Hunter texted CEFC associate Gongwen ‘Kevin’ Dong that he wanted a ‘[$]10 M per annum budget’ 

‘I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,’ Hunter wrote CEFC official Runlong Zhao, in text messages obtained by the IRS investigators

The messages obtained by the IRS investigators Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler are new revelations, separate from the texts published from Hunter’s abandoned laptop.

In an affidavit along with the documents, Ziegler wrote that they were obtained from a search warrant on Hunter’s iCloud account – meaning they come directly from his data stored by Apple, not extracted from his abandoned laptop or another physical device.

This latest tranche of documents were given to the House Ways and Means Committee in an attempt to show Hunter was not telling the truth in his February congressional testimony.

The First Son was questioned by lawmakers about his 2017 texts to a CEFC official in which he demanded millions of dollars and said his father was sitting next to him and was part of the deal.

Hunter dismissed them as drunk messages sent to the wrong person.

Hunter set up a group text conversation on the encrypted messaging app WhatsApp with Joe Biden and his brother Jim Biden, who was also a partner in his multi-million-dollar deal with CEFC 

‘Hunter Biden lied about the recipient of a WhatsApp message sent with the apparent intention to threaten a business associate and demand payment,’ committee chairman Jason Smith claimed Wednesday.

‘In the message, Hunter Biden twice mentioned he was with his father. In the deposition, Hunter Biden sought to dismiss the message, claiming that he was either ‘high or drunk’ when he sent it, and in that state, had sent it to the wrong Zhao, and not actually the one affiliated with the Chinese energy company, CEFC.

‘Hunter claimed under oath that the recipient, ‘had no understanding or even remotely knew what,…I was even…talking about,’ Smith added.

‘However, phone records in front of the Committee today show Hunter Biden sent the message to the correct Chinese businessman by the name of Raymond Zhao who not only was affiliated with CEFC, but knew exactly what Hunter Biden was talking about.’