President Joe Biden denied involvement in his son Hunter Biden's business dealings in China.
A reporter questioned Joe Biden about recent allegations that his son's text messages suggested the president was in the room with him during negotiations with another party.
Hunter Biden Foreign Deals
"No, I wasn't, and I - no!" Biden shouted in response.
The denial pertains to a text message from Hunter Biden to Henry Zhao, the CEO of Harvest Fund Management, in which Hunter claims he was with his father to exert pressure on Zhao to fulfill a commitment.
Nearly a year after reports of a purported voicemail from President Joe Biden to Hunter in which he allegedly discussed his son's international business transactions surfaced, testimony from a whistleblower regarding the investigation into Hunter Biden was made public.
The Justice Department announced earlier this month that Hunter would plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of willful failure to pay federal income tax in exchange for an agreement that is expected to keep him out of jail.
Additionally, the president's son consented to a pretrial diversion agreement for a distinct charge of possession of a firearm by an illegal user or addict of a controlled substance, WCSI reported.
According to one attorney, the release of a new WhatsApp discussion between Hunter Biden and a Chinese businessman is indicative of a particular pattern of behavior.
In a recent agreement between his attorneys and the Department of Justice (DOJ), the president's son pled guilty to misdemeanor tax offenses. According to reports, he will also avoid prosecution on unlawful gun charges by adhering to certain provisions based on his addiction and substance abuse history.
He, his father, and other members of the Biden family have been a top priority for House Republicans, including Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the Oversight Committee led by Representative James Comer, for alleged criminal malfeasance relating to Hunter's role on the board of Ukraine gas company Burisma and receiving millions of dollars from Chinese companies.
Tuesday, the Twitter account for the Oversight Committee shared a new WhatsApp message sent by Hunter Biden to Gongwen ("Kevin") Dong on August 3, 2017. Dong is an employee of CEFC, an energy corporation affiliated with the Chinese Community Party.
🚨BIDEN FAMILY COVER-UP🚨
— Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) June 27, 2023
In a WhatsApp exchange dated 8/3/2017, Hunter Biden tells CEFC associate Gongwen Dong, aka Kevin:
"The Biden's are the best I know at doing exactly what the Chairman wants from this [partnership]."
CEFC is a CCP-linked Chinese Energy Company. pic.twitter.com/ZzRvpMeuNn
Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, wrote in an op-ed for Fox News that the most recent WhatsApp message violates the law "neither confused nor frenzied. In fact, it contains all the clarity and directness that the Bidens have denied the American people."
Turley had previously expressed concern regarding a July 30, 2017 WhatsApp message sent from Hunter's iCloud account to Chinese businessman Henry Zhao. While Comer and other Senate Republicans, such as Charles Grassley, have focused on the Biden family and conducted numerous investigations, their evidence has remained scant or nonexistent.
Per Newsweek, the pair pointed to a previously redacted FBI document as a smoking gun, though both have admitted that information regarding alleged recordings made by a Burisma executive regarding Hunter remains scant.
Hunter Biden's Laptop
Meanwhile, the FBI learned of Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop containing incriminating data for the first time in October 2019, according to an IRS memo.
Gary Shapley, a senior IRS Criminal Investigation official, penned the memo in 2020. It reveals that senior law enforcement officials stewed on the treasure trove of evidence from the First Son's computer for months before handing over snippets to investigators working on the case.
It also directly contradicts an open letter published by 51 former intelligence officials weeks before the 2020 presidential election, in which the laptop was deemed to have "all the classic hallmarks of a Russian information operation."
According to Daily Mail, Shapley and his subordinate, who are both recent Congress whistleblowers, believe that almost three years later, they still haven't received all the data on the hard drive, which could incriminate not only Hunter, but also his father.
Shapley informed lawmakers that his document, dated October 22, 2020, was a record of a meeting that day with his IRS Criminal Investigation team, FBI cyber forensics specialists, and prosecutors heading the criminal investigation into Hunter Biden.
Over the course of three pages, it details when the FBI first obtained Hunter's laptop, which he had left at a Delaware computer repair shop, how investigators established that it belonged to the First Son and had not been tampered with, and how IRS special agents were forced to wait months to obtain emails that could have aided their investigation.
