Hunter Biden tells impeachment inquiry 'I did not involve my father in my business' — despite evidence to the contrary

WASHINGTON — First son Hunter Biden claimed in congressional testimony Wednesday that he was “high or drunk” when he wrote to a Chinese associate in 2017 that he was “sitting here with my father”  — shortly before the transfer of $5.1 million into Biden family-linked accounts.

A readout of the 54-year-old first son’s closed-door impeachment inquiry deposition was provided to numerous news outlets Wednesday evening citing Hunter’s claim that President Biden had nothing to do with the shakedown of Chinese state-linked CEFC China Energy.

The readout said “Hunter admitted that he was high or drunk when he sent the ‘sitting here with my father’ WhatsApp message, sent it to the wrong recipient, and is now embarrassed by the message.”

The same source said that Hunter “confirmed that his dad was not sitting next to him” — as photos from the first son’s abandoned laptop actually show he was at his dad’s Wilmington, Del., home on the day of the threat.

A second source confirmed to The Post that Hunter Biden gave the excuse that he may have been high at the time of writing the message.

Since Hunter appeared under a subpoena, the testimony technically counted as a more sensitive deposition, rather than a typical “transcribed interview,” increasing the risks to anyone who discussed its content before a formal vote to release the transcript, sources said.

The WhatsApp missive implicating Joe Biden was provided to Congress last year by IRS case agent Joseph Ziegler, who alongside his supervisor Gary Shapley alleged a Justice Department coverup to protect Joe and Hunter Biden.

The IRS agents told Congress they were not allowed by the Justice Department to get cellphone geolocation data that could have established whether Hunter was indeed sitting with his father and were repeatedly blocked from pursuing evidence related to Joe Biden.

The CEFC deal was one of the most lucrative for the Biden family and prominently included first brother James Biden.

In bombshell testimony last month, former Biden family business partner Rob Walker testified on Jan. 26 that $3 million in funds from CEFC flowed to him in March 2017 — with about a third going to the Bidens — shortly after Joe Biden met CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming at DC’s Four Seasons hotel.

Walker said the money, dispatched just weeks after Joe Biden left office as vice president, was a “thank you” for preliminary services sourcing business opportunities in a relationship that began in 2015.

A May 2017 email written by Biden family associate James Gilliar penciled in the “big guy” — Joe Biden — for a 10% cut in a proposed joint venture with CEFC, according to files from Hunter’s abandoned laptop, first reported by The Post in October 2020.

Also in May 2017, former Biden family business associate Tony Bobulinski testified he discussed the CEFC venture twice with Joe Biden.

About two months later, Hunter put the Chinese company on notice that he expected them to transfer funds, after cutting out most of his other business partners with the exception of his uncle James, who helped the Chinese firm scout out natural gas opportunities in the US.

The readout simultaneously reported by many news outlets Wednesday night said Hunter testified that Gilliar was “out of his mind” when suggesting a 10% cut for his dad, though Joe Biden’s perceived involvement seemed to oil the wheels of commerce.

Within 10 days of the threatening message, $5.1 million flowed from CEFC to Biden-linked accounts, according to information in a 2020 report by Republican-led Senate committees.

In an opening statement distributed to the media, Hunter accused House Republicans of spreading “baseless and MAGA-motivated conspiracies” about his father’s role in an array of foreign business relationships and insisted he “never” involved President Biden “in my business” — despite what Republican investigators say is substantial evidence to the contrary.

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Hunter did not speak to reporters as he arrived shortly before 10 a.m. for a full day of questioning from the three House committees leading the investigation.

“I am here today to provide the committees with the one incontestable fact that should end the false premise of this inquiry: I did not involve my father in my business,” Hunter claimed.

“Not while I was a practicing lawyer, not in my investments or transactions domestic or international, not as a board member, and not as an artist. Never.”

President Biden similarly has said that he “never” discussed business with Hunter or first brother James Biden and in December insisted he “did not” interact with any of their associates — despite evidence that he actually met repeatedly with them during and after his vice presidency.

Emails, witness testimony, and even photos show Joe Biden encountered his son and brother’s associates from two different Chinese government-linked business deals and others from Mexico, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine.

‘PUBLIC HEARING’ NEXT

Republican and Democratic committee members bickered over the course of the six-and-a-half hour testimony about whether the evidence gathered at this point amounted to the constitutional threshold of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

“This is supposed to be an impeachment investigation, which means it’s supposed to be focusing on treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors committed by the president,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the panel. “We’ve heard no evidence of treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors touching Joe Biden.”

“I think this is a great deposition for us,” Oversight chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) countered, adding that the first son’s testimony yielded “contradictory statements that need further review.”

“This impeachment inquiry will now go to the next phase, which will be a public hearing,” he added, saying he was hopeful the venue would “clear up some discrepancies” between the testimonies of Hunter and his former business partners.

Raskin and Democrats harped on the recent indictment of Alexander Smirnov, a former FBI informant who alleged the owner of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma said he bribed Joe Biden and his son with $10 million to shut down an investigation into the firm.

They also downplayed many phone conversations Joe Biden had with Hunter’s associates while defending the first son’s “serious” experience in “corporate governance.”

“He has served on multiple corporate boards. He’s been involved in lots of business. And he was an expert on corporate governance,” Raskin said. “So he rendered the value that people do.”

Hunter waived his Fifth Amendment rights in the hearing, but his testimony was misleading at several points, Republicans said.

“It’s been impressive to listen to Hunter Biden either give excuses about being a drug addict, and how difficult it is to go through years of addiction, and then swing the next minute to his extreme expertise and business experience that applies to him on so many boards and allowed him to teach at Georgetown University,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said.

Greene said the first son “lied” about his involvement with Democratic PR shop Blue Star Strategies but was then presented with an email exchange confirming he set up talks between Blue Star and Burisma.

“When pressure was placed on Hunter Biden, he swung back to being, you know, a poor, pitiful addict. And then when he wanted to brag about things, well he was the smartest, most successful businessman in the room.”

“It is a mirage to believe that Hunter Biden was engaged in international business,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) told reporters when leaving the hearing. “This was a bribe masquerading as an international business transaction.”

Hunter’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, said before the two left that Republicans appeared eager “to spend more time talking about my client’s addiction” than question “anything to do with what they call their impeachment network.”

Hunter Biden’s opening statement slammed Republicans and tauntingly accused them of having no evidence against the president. 

“For more than a year, your committees have hunted me in your partisan political pursuit of my dad. You have trafficked in innuendo, distortion and sensationalism — all the while ignoring the clear and convincing evidence staring you in the face. You do not have evidence to support the baseless and MAGA-motivated conspiracies about my father because there isn’t any,” his opening statement declared.

Hunter further claimed, without going into specifics, that some documents against him had been “altered.”

“Over the last year, Republicans have taken my communications out of context, relied on documents that have been altered, and cherry-picked snippets of financial or other records to misrepresent what really happened,” he said.

“Examples of this include a few references to my family in emails or texts that I sent when I was in the darkest days of my addiction. If you try to do that again today, my answers will reveal your tactics and demonstrate the truth that my father was never involved in any of my businesses.”

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It’s possible that the first son was referring to a 2019 message in which Hunter griped about having to give “half” of his income to his father.

The first son also attacked some of the witnesses in the impeachment inquiry, including former associates Bobulinski and Jason Galanis, but not others who had provided much of Republicans’ ammunition. 

Democrats previewed the hearing by arguing that the inquiry should be called off — echoing President Biden, who requested an end to the probe after the Justice Department indicted Smirnov for allegedly fabricating his bribery allegation against the Bidens.

But Republicans said they had no such plans.

“That nuanced statement will be cross-examined today to find out not what [Joe Biden] wasn’t but what he was,” said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).

“He was someone who was receiving correspondence, he was someone who was transporting his son to and from important business opportunities on government expense, and most importantly, he was aware of things that he previously said he wasn’t aware of.”

‘BIG GUY’ EVIDENCE

A series of prior witnesses have fingered Joe Biden as having a major role in lucrative foreign business relationships during and immediately after his eight years as vice president.

In 2013, as part of an initial Chinese state-backed venture — preceding the CEFC dealings with the shakedown text and the “big guy” email — then-VP Joe Biden was introduced by his son and had coffee with Jonathan Li, the incoming CEO of BHR Partners, during an official trip to Beijing, former Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer testified July 31.

Archer said Joe Biden later greeted Li on speaker phone during a subsequent trip by Hunter to China. The VP also wrote college recommendation letters for both of Li’s children.

BHR Partners, which like CEFC sought out foreign resources for China, such as cobalt for electric car batteries, was officially registered as a company within two weeks of the visit, the Wall Street Journal reported. Hunter held a 10% stake in the firm through at least part of his father’s term as president.

Joe Biden as VP also joined two separate dinners at a DC’s Cafe Milano — in 2014 and 2015 — with his son’s Kazakhstani, Russian and Ukrainian patrons, Archer said. Only one of those meetings was known from laptop files and witness corroboration before his testimony, and Archer dismissed claims that Joe Biden only briefly appeared.

Dinner guests included former Moscow first lady Yelena Baturina, who transferred $3.5 million to a Hunter Biden-linked entity in early 2014 and separately invested more than $100 million with Archer’s Rosemont Realty, with which Hunter Biden also was briefly associated.

House Republicans have scrutinized President Biden’s decision to leave Baturina off a growing list of Russian business leaders facing US sanctions over the two-year Russia-Ukraine war.

Convicted fraudster Galanis told House investigators in a prison interview Friday that he was present for a Brooklyn gathering in May 2014 during which Hunter put his father on speaker phone with Baturina.

Kazakhstani businessman Kenes Rakishev, who purchased Hunter a $142,000 sports car, also dined with Joe Biden and posed for a group photo with him.

Vadym Pozharsky, an executive at Burisma, which paid Hunter up to $1 million per year beginning in 2014 when his father led US policy toward Ukraine, wrote Hunter an email the next day after the 2015 dinner thanking him for the opportunity to meet his father.

Archer additionally alleged that Hunter Biden stepped away from a gathering at the Four Seasons in Dubai in December 2015 to “call DC” with Zlochevsky and Pozharsky — shortly before the vice president abruptly threatened to deny a $1 billion US loan guarantee to Kyiv as leverage to force the ouster of Ukrainian prosecutor-general Viktor Shokin, who seized assets from Burisma’s owner shortly before he was fired.

In November 2015, Joe Biden also hosted at his vice president’s residence and gave a White House tour to Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim and members of the wealthy Mexican Aleman family, whom Hunter Biden and his associate Jeff Cooper courted with energy and technology pitches.

Joe Biden is pictured at the VP’s residence with Cooper, Hunter, Slim, Miguel Alemán Velasco and his son Miguel Aleman Magnani, the founder of the airline Interjet.

Hunter stayed for free at a vacation property owned by Aleman Magnani and helped set up meetings for him with Obama-Biden administration aides including Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx and the administrator of the Federal Aviation Authority, and even wrote him a 2016 email whose timestamp suggests he and Cooper were aboard Air Force Two on an official vice presidential trip to Mexico.

Republicans also were expected to grill Hunter on his sources of income since his father became president — including the sale of his novice artworks and an unusual patronage arrangement with Hollywood lawyer Kevin Morris.

After his father entered the White House, Hunter made at least $1.5 million in sales of his beginner art pieces — with clients including Democratic donor Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali, who paid $94,000, Manhattan art dealer Georges Bergès told Congress last month.

Naftali scored a prestigious presidential commission appointment after buying her first piece of Hunter’s art for $42,000 in February 2021, as well as repeated visits to the White House, and later paid $52,000 for a second piece. She has denied attempting to buy influence.

Morris, meanwhile, has commissioned a documentary crew to follow the first son for a potential sympathetic docuseries while paying off Hunter’s tax debts and his living expenses.

The lawyer testified last month that it was “basically” true that he loaned Hunter $4.9 million from 2020 to 2022, beginning about a month after he first met Hunter for the first time at a fundraiser for his father’s presidential campaign. Republicans leading the probe believe the total amount could top $7 million.

Hunter’s current benefactor said that he expects the loans to be repaid, but that it’s possible they could be forgiven — floating in his own testimony the prospect of Hunter providing free car washes for the rest of his life.

The first son is facing potential prison time for gun violations in Delaware and tax fraud in Los Angeles after walking away in July from a probation-only plea deal over courtroom demands for assurances of immunity for other past conduct, such as alleged violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which could implicate his father.

His Los Angeles trial is scheduled to begin June 20.