I think we can safely file this one under “You Can’t Make This…Stuff Up” — I mean, you could but at this point, the truth actually does appear stranger than fiction.
Let’s start with a brief overview: The 53-year-old son of a former U.S. senator, vice president, and sitting president, got kicked out of the Navy (at 43!) due to a failed drug test, ditched his wife of 24 years (and the mother of his three eldest children) for the widow of his recently-deceased elder brother, whom he then cheated on with an Arkansas stripper, with whom he fathered a child, before marrying a South African filmmaker a week after meeting her and fathering his fifth child (that we know of) with her, tossed an illegal gun in a dumpster, borrowed thousands of dollars from The Big Guy (a/k/a his father) to finance his drug and Russian prostitute habit, and recorded a video of himself smoking crack and drinking a White Claw in a “sensory deprivation tank” – in 2019! — and he has a penchant for recording these exploits and saving them to laptops, which he subsequently abandons.
During his father’s vice presidency (and beyond), this scandal-happy scion also found himself a party to multiple questionable business dealings with foreign persons and entities, landed a handsomely paying seat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company owned by corrupt oligarchs, and another sweet gig as a board member of Chinese private equity fund BHR Partners shortly after one of his many treks to China aboard Air Force Two with his father.
Oh, and in recent years, the notorious ne’er-do-well has taken up painting — and been paid handsomely (again/always) for his efforts, setting off ethics questions.
Paintings in last year’s show varied between $75,000 for works on paper to $500,000 for bigger canvases. He sold at least five of the $75,000 ones last year.
According to the NY Post, the most expensive work at Hunter’s new show — a mustard floral painting on Yupo Japanese paper — is priced at $225,000 — and allegedly has two interested buyers.
But we don’t know who those buyers are because of the intervention of the White House in crafting an “ethics deal” last year. The only person who is supposed to know who the buyers are is the gallerist, George Berges. This deal was nonsensical, as the very crafting of it involved the White House in Hunter’s business which was improper. Plus ultimately, all it seems to have done is keep us from knowing who the buyers were, and who might be trying to curry favor with the Bidens by buying Hunter’s artwork.
I know I said “brief,” but there’s just so much to work with…
In any event, circling back to Hunter’s questionable Chinese business dealings (about which RedState has written extensively — and I do mean extensively), on Thursday, The New York Post reported on yet another fun twist to the Hunter saga: namely, that he had an FBI mole, code-named “One-Eye,” whom he used to be tipped off on probes into his Chinese business partners. This comes courtesy of Israeli energy expert, Gal Luft, who was arrested in Cyprus in February for alleged gunrunning.
We reported on Luft’s claims at the time, noting:
According to Luft’s legal team, information on Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and Jim Biden was handed over to the FBI all the way back in 2019. That’s in the same timeframe that Timothy Thibault was heading up the investigation into the president’s son. Thibault was later fired for concealing evidence for partisan reasons.
Per this latest…err..eye-opening revelation from the Post:
From 2015 to 2018, Luft organized international energy conferences in partnership with Ho’s think tank, the nonprofit China Energy Fund Committee (CEFC-USA), a front organization for Ye’s CEFC.
Ye confided to Luft that Hunter had an informant in the FBI “or formerly of the bureau, extremely well placed, who they paid lots of money to [provide] sealed law enforcement information,” says Henoch.
The FBI mole was called “One-Eye.”
Whoever “One-Eye” was, his tips must not have been particularly helpful — at least not to Hunter’s Chinese business associates.
“One-Eye” told Ye that the Southern District of New York was investigating him and/or Ho in late 2017, and that “an Asian, an African, and a Jewish guy” were named on a sealed indictment, says Henoch.
Soon after that tipoff, Ye offered Hunter $1 million to be his “private counsel” and flew to China, leaving his wife, daughter, son, mother, and nanny in his $50 million penthouse at 15 Central Park West.
He was detained in Shanghai three months later and disappeared.
Before he left New York, Ye told Ho that the coast was clear for him to come back to the US.
On Nov. 18, 2017, Ho flew into JFK Airport, where he was arrested by FBI agents on bribery and money laundering charges.
“Ho was the patsy … the fall guy,” says Henoch.
Ho was convicted in December 2018, without calling a single witness, served three years in jail, and was deported. Prosecutors placed the spotlight in his case on China’s use of foreign bribery to win contracts for its Belt and Road Initiative.
Hunter was paid $1 million by CEFC to represent Ho, which entailed contacting his FBI sources on Ho’s behalf and engaging another attorney to do the legal work, according to emails on his laptop.
Those payments, by the way, were in addition to nearly $5 million paid to Hunter and Jim Biden, the president’s brother, in 2017 and 2018. Which is in addition to the $1.3 million paid to Biden family members (including Hunter, Jim, Hallie, and a fourth mystery Biden) through Rob Walker, husband to Jill Biden’s personal assistant.
Is Luft’s accusation accurate? Given what we know thus far about Hunter’s exploits, it can’t be readily dismissed. I must say, for someone who’s had so many obstacles to overcome in his life, Hunter Biden sure has managed to secure a pretty penny along the way — what exactly said pennies purchased is, of course, grounds for ample speculation. And as for his alleged friend, the mole, well, as the saying goes: “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”
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