Hunter Biden confirmed in his deposition that President Joe Biden attended dinners with his foreign business partners.
The president’s son had a closed-door deposition with two House committees Wednesday attended by members of both parties. The meeting was not recorded, but a transcript was released Thursday that confirmed some key details in the impeachment inquiry into the president for his alleged involvement in his son’s business deals, which was reviewed by the New York Post.
Hunter verified that his father attended two dinners as vice president in 2014 and 2015 with his Kazakhstani, Russian, and Ukrainian business associates. One of these dinner attendees included Vadym Pozharskyi, an executive at Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, which paid the president’s son an annual $1 million salary as his father led Ukrainian policy at the White House.
“I do believe that Vadym was at one of these dinners, yes,” Hunter said.
The New York Post reported this meeting in 2020, which Joe Biden’s presidential campaign denied, citing his official schedule.
Hunter confirmed another dinner attendee was Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina, who reportedly gave $3.5 million to a company jointly owned by Hunter in 2014. This transfer came ten days after the reported meeting. Baturina has since avoided sanctions issued by the White House amid Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“I never received a dime from Ms. Baturina,” Hunter testified.
Another confirmed attendee was Kenes Rakishev, a Kazakhstani businessman who reportedly bought the president’s son a $142,000 sports car.
The president’s son downplayed the 2014 meeting, claiming, “My dad stopped by because it was my actual birthday.”
The 2015 dinner was a fundraiser for an international charity.
“I don’t remember exactly who was there because it’s sometimes conflated,” Hunter said of the meeting.
Hunter did not confirm if he left his infamous laptop at a Delaware shop in 2019, where it was leaked to the public.
“In 2019, did you drop your laptop off at a repair shop?” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) asked.
“Not that I remember, no,” Hunter said.
The president’s son described himself as a “high-functioning addict” at the time of the business deals in question. He testified he was “drunk and probably high” when he sent a threatening message to a Chinese associate in 2017 that he was “sitting here with my father.” He said he meant to send the message to Raymond Zhao of the Chinese state-linked CEFC China Energy but accidentally sent it to Henry Zhao, another Chinese associate.
“The next day, I speak to a Raymond Zhao, who has never received the message that Henry Zhao got,” Hunter testified.
CEFC transferred $5.1 million to Hunter and his uncle James within ten days of the message.
Hunter maintained in the deposition that his father had no wrongdoing in his business deals.
“The pattern that I see is that you literally have no evidence whatsoever of any corruption on the part of my father,” Hunter told Rep. Pat Fallon (R-TX). “And, therefore, what you’re trying to do is, you’re trying to make every single thing in business that I was ever involved in somehow corrupt.”
