Republican elected officials said Wednesday, May 10, that members of Joe Biden's family and their associates had received in the greatest opacity nearly $ 10 million from foreign companies, including Chinese and Romanian. The charges are part of a long-running campaign targeting the controversial business of Hunter Biden, the Democratic president's eventful son. The right accuses him of having capitalized on his name and the address book of his father, when he was vice president of Barack Obama (2009-2017), in order to make dubious contracts in several countries.
In a report published Wednesday, Republican lawmakers on a parliamentary committee charged with overseeing the executive branch now say other family members, including the president's brother or daughter-in-law, have done business in China or Romania. The elected officials rely on bank statements obtained through the investigative powers of their committee and explain that those close to Joe Biden had created a nebulous network of companies to hide the origin of the funds.
'Joe Biden knew'
"The lack of transparency surrounding the Biden family's overseas affairs raises important national security issues," they write. "When Vice President Biden gave lessons in ethics and against corruption to Romania, Hunter Biden received (...) more than a million dollars from a company controlled by a Romanian accused of corruption," they give as an example. Their report does not impute any illegal acts to the Bidens and never makes a direct link to the US president. But at a press conference, Congressman Byron Donalds said he was convinced that "Joe Biden knew."
In a statement, the elected Democrats of their committee accuse their Republican colleagues of having "chosen misleading information". As for the White House, it considered it "absurd" to accuse Joe Biden of serving China's interests, "on the basis of unfounded allegations and personal attacks", while refraining from going into detail. The affairs and escapades of Hunter Biden, who has long suffered from a drug addiction, represent a weak link for Joe Biden who, at 80, has just announced that he will seek another term in 2024. But the president never let it go. "My son did nothing wrong, I trust him," he said in early May, although the latter is threatened by a federal justice investigation for tax fraud.