Yesterday’s presser by James Comer and House Oversight raised a lot of questions about the Biden family’s business affairs — and especially what exactly they were peddling for $10 million or more. No one yet can explain what legitimate products or services got exchanged for that cash, nor has anyone offered any explanation for why legitimate compensation would have to get run through the labyrinth of LLCs and the Biden Inc pattern of structured payments.

Of course, some people just don’t want to know — especially our Protection Racket Media:

Holy shit. This is the New York Times' takeaway from Comer's press conference revealing that bank records show 9 members of the Biden family received millions of dollars from foreign nationals while he was Vice President. pic.twitter.com/GTLTPsujt8

— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) May 11, 2023

I smell a Pulitzer for this level of coverage! (Walter Duranty Memorial category, of course.)

The questions aren’t just about what the Bidens were selling, but who was doing the buying. Nat-sec analyst John Schindler took a close look at the client list for the Biden family enterprise and saw some very familiar names. In fact, as John points out, those names were also familiar to the FBI before the Bidens started raking in cash from their enterprises. And that leads to a very important question:

CEFC’s efforts to enter a relationship with Biden Inc. date to late 2015, when Joe Biden was still vice president. Moreover, CEFC employed multiple shell companies to mask high-dollar payments to Biden Inc. Hunter Biden forged relationships with CEFC’s boss Ye Jianming as well as Gongwen “Kevin” Dong, who was CEFC’s “emissary” to the United States. Hunter Biden likewise got chummy with another CEFC bigwig, Chi Ping “Patrick” Ho (Ho was the friend memorably referred to by Hunter Biden as “the f*****g spy boss of China”).

In other words, Hunter Biden knew exactly what sort of people his friends from Beijing were. During the critical 2017-18 time frame, it was hardly a secret that CEFC was closely allied with the Chinese Communist Party, its military, and its intelligence services. Even CNN in 2018 admitted that CEFC leadership, above all Ye Jianming, appeared to be unusually close with Chinese intelligence. Before that, CEFC was run out of the Czech Republic thanks to its shady business acquisitions, plus its efforts to buy off Czech politicians and influencers were so blatant that they got the attention of Prague’s counterintelligence service. CEFC’s activities in the Czech Republic represented a classic case of weaponizing a front company to lavish funds in the service of Beijing’s interests.

By the time Biden Inc. decided to take millions of dollars from CEFC for unspecified services, it was known to Western counterintelligence to be a front for Chinese espionage. Moreover, Patrick Ho was identified by the FBI as a Chinese spy right when Hunter Biden was becoming his friend and partner. CEFC started to come crashing down in late 2018 when Ho was convicted on multiple counts of bribery and money laundering, which the Justice Department only learned about because they were already spying on Ho per the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They were spying on Ho because they knew CEFC was a Chinese spy front.

So the question is: what did the FBI know about Biden Inc’s ties to the CEFC and other potential Chinese intelligence operations? More importantly, what did they do about it — and where is the documentation? John wants to know that as well:

The intelligence community had to know in real-time, or close, about the shady financial dealings between CEFC and the Bidens. Where are those intelligence reports now?

That is indeed a serious question. Yesterday’s Oversight presser didn’t directly address it either, although it did address CEFC’s orientation to the CCP (without reference to espionage) and Gongwen Dong specifically around the 41:30 mark. Nancy Mace gets closer to it starting at minute 46 or so:

Is this what the alleged whistleblower tried to uncover in 2018? An attorney representing this whistleblower came forward a couple of weeks ago to allege that the FBI buried an allegation of bribery between then-VP Biden and a foreign entity. One week ago, Comer and Ranking Member Chuck Grassley on Senate Judiciary had demanded that Christopher Wray produce the form FD-1023 created when the whistleblower alerted the FBI.

Yesterday, Comer and Grassley announced that the FBI has refused to do so — but in refusing, managed to confirm that the FD-1023 exists and is apparently hot enough to keep under wraps:

“It’s clear from the FBI’s response that the unclassified record the Oversight Committee subpoenaed exists, but they are refusing to provide it to the Committee. We’ve asked the FBI to not only provide this record, but to also inform us what it did to investigate these allegations. The FBI has failed to do both. The FBI’s position is ‘trust, but you aren’t allowed to verify.’ That is unacceptable. We plan to follow up with the FBI and expect compliance with the subpoena,” said Chairman Comer.

“While the FBI has failed to produce the specific document by the subpoena deadline, their offer to provide an accommodation process in response to our legitimate request indicates the document is real. So the question remains, what did the FBI do to investigate very serious allegations from an apparent trusted FBI source implicating then-Vice President Biden? Today’s letter from the FBI raises additional questions, including whether the FBI has an open investigation based on these allegations. The American people pay the FBI’s salaries, and they’re entitled to a fulsome response,” Senator Grassley said.

If the allegation went nowhere, the FD-1023 wouldn’t require confidential handling. If the allegation had merit, then the FBI has to explain why it sat around for years without any action.

My guess, as I told Adam Baldwin in the Amiable Skeptics episode today, is that the Oversight Committee already has a copy of the FD-1023 or know what it contains. One does not climb out on this limb on mere speculation. Comer and Grassley likely anticipated this answer from Wray on that basis, and wanted to apply more heat over the FBI’s handling of Biden Inc links to known CCP intel fronts like CEFC.

The Protection Racket Media might stick with its “nothing to see here, move along” narrative with this story, but it’s not going to just disappear. That’s true because Republicans finally have the ability to conduct a real investigation into the Biden family’s corrupt dealings, but also because the main players in Biden Inc are idiots who keep making spectacles of themselves — especially Hunter. One has to wonder whether the CCP and its intel operatives regret having to deal with them by now.

Speaking of the Bidens, that’s precisely what Andrew Malcolm and I did Monday in the latest episode of The Ed Morrissey Show podcast. Today’s show features:

• What did the Prince of Twitter think of the coronation? Depends on which one you’re talking about.
• The MSNBC interview of Joe Biden certainly reminds us that the media will fight to keep Biden on the throne here.
• We also talk about Biden’s comments on the open investigation into Hunter Biden’s alleged crimes, Biden’s biggest screw-up since Afghanistan, and more!

The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at  Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!