Prepared Floor Statement by Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa
United States Senate
The Biden Family Investigation – Part I
March 28, 2022
Today,
Senator Johnson and I will begin our series of speeches on our investigation
into the Biden Family’s financial deals.
We’ll
make these presentations with two themes:
First,
we’ll refute and dismantle the talking point that the liberal media and our
Democratic colleagues pushed on the American people: That our investigation
advanced and spread Russian disinformation.
On
November
29, 2021,
May
11, 2021,
March
18, 2021,
December
14, 2020,
December
10, 2020,
October
19, 2020, and
September
29, 2020, I came to the floor to rebut those false charges.
The
liberal media and my Democratic colleagues ought to be ashamed of themselves
for the outright lies they peddled about our investigative work.
As a
result, Senator Johnson and I did what any good investigator would do: We
gathered even more records to prove them all wrong.
Which
brings me to the second theme: Senator Johnson and I will produce new records
to show additional connections between the Biden Family and the communist
Chinese regime.
Before
we get to those records, I’m going to discuss the background for our
investigation.
We
started this investigation last Congress, when I was Chairman of the Finance
Committee and Senator Johnson was Chairman of the Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs Committee.
It began
in August of 2019, when I
started
an inquiry into a transaction involving Hunter Biden that was reviewed by the
federal government’s Committee on Foreign Investment.
On
September 23, 2020, Senator Johnson and I released our
report.
On
November 18, 2020, we released our supplement to that
report.
Those
reports were based in large part on Obama administration government records and
almost a dozen transcribed interviews of government officials.
In both
reports, we made financial information public that hadn’t been known before.
Our
report exposed extensive financial relationships between Hunter and James Biden
and Chinese nationals connected to the communist regime.
More
precisely, these were Chinese nationals connected to the Chinese Government’s
military and intelligence services.
One of
those individuals was Patrick Ho.
According to reports, Hunter Biden said of this man: “I have another New
York Times reporter calling about my representation of Patrick Ho – the [Hunter
Biden says the F word] spy chief of China who started the company that my
partner, who is worth $323 billion, founded and is now missing.”
We’ll
get into more detail with respect to Patrick Ho in future speeches. We’ll do the same with Gongwen Dong, another
close associate of Hunter Biden who was connected to the communist regime.
Now,
Hunter Biden’s reference to “my partner” is an apparent reference to Ye Jianming.
Ye had
connections to the People’s Liberation Army.
Ye had a
company called CEFC which had multiple variations. Today, and in future speeches, Senator
Johnson and I will simply refer to it as CEFC.
Documents
show that CEFC’s corporate mission was “to expand cooperation in the
international energy economy and contribute to the national development.”
Let me
emphasize the word “national.”
CEFC
existed for the communist state. Indeed,
records show that CEFC is dedicating itself to serving China’s national energy
strategy, developing national strategic reserves for oil, and “partnering with
centrally-administered and stated-owned enterprises.”
Records
prepared by one of Hunter and James Biden’s business associates, James Gilliar,
say the following about CEFC:
“At the
time, China was hungry for crude, but its state-backed companies were having
difficulty closing some deals abroad.
The optics of China’s state-backed giants marching into a country to buy
and extract oil weren’t great for central Asian politicians. This paved the way for private firms like
CEFC, which can strike oil deals in Europe and the Middle East where Chinese
State Owned Enterprises could bring political liabilities.”
Documents
also show that CEFC “is building an energy storage and logistics system in
Europe” to connect China, Europe and the Middle East.
Why?
To serve
“China’s ambitions to have overseas storage locations connected with world
markets.”
The
document further states that CEFC’s investment bank division has investments in
the energy sector “which are in tandem with the government’s 4 trillion dollar
One Belt One Road foreign investment program.”
CEFC
operated under the guise of a private company but was for all intents and
purposes an arm of the Chinese Government.
Hunter
Biden and James Biden served as the perfect vehicle by which the communist
Chinese government could gain in-roads here in the United States through CEFC
and its affiliates.
And
these in-roads were focused on China’s advancement into the global and U.S.
energy sector.
Hunter
and James Biden were more than happy to go along for the right price.
Let’s
turn to the first poster next to me which shows a bank record that hasn’t been
made public before.
This is
a portion of a document that we’ll release in full.
The top
of this poster shows a wire transaction on August 4, 2017, from CEFC to Wells
Fargo Clearing Services for one hundred thousand dollars.
Now,
look at the bottom of the poster.
This is
the underlying data for the transaction.
It states, “further credit to Owasco.”
Owasco is
Hunter Biden’s firm.
There’s
no middle man in this transaction. This
is one hundred thousand dollars from what is effectively an arm of the
communist Chinese government direct to Hunter Biden.
To the
liberal media and my Democratic colleagues:
is this official bank document Russian disinformation?
Beyond
this document, in future speeches Senator Johnson and I will show you more
transfers between and among companies such as CEFC, Northern International
Capital, Hudson West Three, Hunter Biden’s Owasco and James Biden’s Lion Hall
Group.
In doing
so, keep in mind the players in this game:
Hunter Biden, James Biden, Ye Jianming, Gongwen Dong, Mervyn Yan and
Patrick Ho, to name a few. All of these
individuals mixed and mingled with related corporate entities over a period of
years and with respect to millions of dollars.
Let’s
turn to the next poster. Those connections
are illustrated by this second poster next to me, which I made public last
November. It’s an original bank record,
with one typographical error and all.
Here,
you have Hunter Biden, Gongwen Dong and Mervyn Yan executing an assignment and
assumption agreement together.
To the
liberal media: is this official record Russian disinformation?
In our
next speeches, we’ll show you more records that haven’t been seen before –
records that undeniably show strong links between the Biden Family and
communist China.
Today is
just a small taste.
I’d like
to note one thing before I turn it over to Senator Johnson who will describe to
you the ridiculous attacks that we received claiming that our reports were
Russian disinformation.
On March
16 of this year, the New York Times unwittingly substantiated our reports by
reporting on Hunter Biden’s connections to foreign corporations and his
potential criminal exposure.
So, what
Senator Johnson and I made public last ongress is now the prevailing fact
pattern that even the liberal media can’t ignore any longer and falsely label
Russian disinformation.
I’ll
turn it over to Senator Johnson to provide additional examples of the media’s
attacks last Congress.
Thank
you, Senator Grassley.
I want
to first thank you for your tenacity in pursuing the truth and ignoring all of
the false attacks leveled against us during the course of our multi-year
investigations into corruption at the highest levels of the federal
government. Both of us have been first
hand witnesses, and at the same time victims, of the dishonesty of our Democrat
Senate colleagues and their willing accomplices in the media. When it comes to our investigation into the
vast web of foreign financial entanglements of the Biden family, those attacks
have had one goal in mind - to cover up the extent to which President Biden
might be - and almost certainly is - compromised.
Over the
course of our investigation into how Hunter Biden used his father’s position
and name to enrich himself and his family, the dishonest press published
countless stories reporting on the Democrat’s false charge that we were
soliciting and disseminating Russian disinformation. Once we issued our September and November
2020 reports, which were based almost exclusively on U.S. sourced documents and
interviews with U.S. citizens, the media largely ignored it. When they did write a story on it, they
declared that our reports found nothing new. A classic media cover-up.
I’ve
always said the bias in the media is revealed far more in what they don’t
report versus what they do report.
But all
the false attacks have not deterred us.
We have continued to uncover the truth, and fortunately, our reports
also served as a catalyst for others to come forward and for more investigative
journalists to keep digging. The
American people deserve the truth.
That’s
why we’re presenting additional evidence today and over the next few days. For
example, this is the first time this document is being made public. It shows that money from CEFC – which is
effectively an arm of the Chinese Government – went directly to Hunter
Biden.
Bank
records like this piece of evidence are pretty hard to deny and sweep under the
rug. Our reports were chocked full of
irrefutable evidence like this. And yet,
the media buried those details, in an attempt to keep it hidden from the
American people.
Because
the mainstream media and our Democratic colleagues had no substance to refute
our reports, they reverted to their time-honored tradition of lying, making
false accusations against us, and engaging in the politics of personal
destruction.
Again,
their goal was to destroy the credibility of our reports before the American
people even had a chance to read them.
For example, listen to what New York Times
journalist Nicholas Fandos said about our report:
“lack of
meaningful new information” and “overlap with a Russian disinformation
campaign.”
The
then-Democratic Minority Leader was quoted saying about our report: “as if
Putin wrote it, not United States senators.”
A
Democratic senator described our investigation as being “rooted in
disinformation” from Russian operatives.
Separately,
a Democratic senator also said about our report: “Bottom line: the
Johnson-Grassley investigation is baseless. It’s laundering Russian propaganda
for circulation in the U.S.”
But all
of those quotes were disinformation. As Senator Grassley reiterated, our
reports were based almost exclusively on government records from the Obama
administration and transcribed interviews of government officials.
So, how
did the Democrats and their liberal media allies carry out this false attack on
us? We describe part of what they did in
Section 10 in our September 2020 report.
Their disinformation and smear campaign against us and our reports was
extensive, but in the interest of time, I’ll give you a shorter, cliff notes version.
On July
13, 2020, then-Minority Leader Schumer, Senator Warner, Speaker Pelosi, and
Rep. Schiff sent a letter to the FBI to express a purported belief that
Congress was the subject of a foreign disinformation campaign. The letter
included a classified attachment that had unclassified elements that attempted
to tie Senator Grassley’s and my work to Andriy Derkach, a Russian
agent. The Democrats speculated that based on this unclassified
information, Senator Grassley and I had received materials from Derkach.
This was false. But this information linking Senator Grassley and I to
Derkach was leaked to liberal media outlets to start a false narrative to smear
us.
Until
news reports of this false allegation surfaced, I had never even heard of the
man. We immediately, and forcefully, denied the false allegation, but Democrats
and the media continued to spread the lie.
To this day no one has ever apologized to either of us for spreading
this lie.
Next, my
staff and Senator Grassley’s staff did a transcribed interview of George Kent.
During
that interview, Democrat staff members introduced
Derkach’s materials into the record. Then Democrat staff members asked Mr. Kent
about it. He stated, “What you’re asking me to interpret is a master chart of
disinformation and malign influence.”
So the
actual truth of the matter is that Democrats, NOT Senator Grassley or I,
introduced known Russian
disinformation into our investigation record.
They did the exact thing they were falsely accusing us of doing.
Again,
not my staff. Not
Senator Grassley’s
staff. Democrats were disseminating Russian disinformation. Just like they did with the Steele dossier.
Then-Ranking
Members Wyden and Peters sent me and Senator Grassley a letter asking for an
intelligence briefing relating to our investigation.
Such a
briefing was completely unnecessary. But it was an effort by our Democrat
colleagues to further falsely taint our investigation hoping to discredit the
truth.
On July
28, 2020, Senator Grassley and I reminded them that the FBI and relevant
members of the Intelligence Community had already briefed the committees in
March 2020 and assured us that there was no reason to discontinue our
investigation.
Then, in
August 2020, Senator Grassley and I were provided a briefing from the FBI – a
briefing that we did not request - that was also leaked to the press to further
smear us.
This
unsolicited FBI
briefing was also not necessary and was completely irrelevant to the substance
of our investigation.
The FBI
briefers did tell us that they weren’t there to “quash, curtail, or interfere”
in our investigation in any way.
No
government entity ever warned us that our investigation into the Biden family’s
financial deals was connected to any kind of Russian disinformation campaign -
because it wasn’t.
But,
again, the substance of that FBI briefing was later leaked and contorted to
smear us - which was exactly why, we suspect, we were given the unsolicited
briefing in the first place. Those
briefers promised confidentially.
Clearly, that confidentiality was breached and resulted in another smear
operation on Senator Grassley and I to deflect allegations of corruption and
conflicts of interest that could compromise President Biden.
To-date,
we do not know who all was involved in this smear campaign, but after repeated
requests, Director Wray and Director Haines have refused to come in and fully
explain who requested and directed this briefing, and why it was provided.
So, to
review. Senior Democrats and liberal
media cooperated to smear me and Senator Grassley with false accusations of
receiving and spreading Russian disinformation.
They
created documents, leaked them, asked for briefings and then leaked those,
too. And then they, themselves,
disseminated Russian disinformation.
Fortunately, they failed to discredit our investigation because we stayed true
to government records. We stayed true to
the facts and the evidence.
And the
evidence is stunning and it is growing.
Over the
next few days, Senator Grassley and I will come to the floor to present
additional evidence that has not yet been made public.
These
records show extensive connections between the Biden Family and elements of the
communist Chinese regime.
We’re talking high-dollar
transactions- some of which we’ve already highlighted in our September and
November 2020 reports. But, our speeches
will introduce new financial documents into the public record for all to see.
We
expect Democrats and the media to continue to use their power to smear us and
cover up for the Biden’s. But the truth
has a power of its own, and we intend to continue to reveal the truth.
I yield
the floor.
*****
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