(CNN) House Republicans said in a new memo released Thursday that members of President Joe Biden’s family received just over $1 million indirectly from a Chinese company, the latest revelation by the committee in its investigation into the Biden family’s business dealings.
The memo, which White House officials and Hunter Biden’s legal team quickly dismissed, did not provide any evidence linking the payments directly to President Joe Biden, which Republicans say is the focus of their investigation.
The memo names Hallie Biden, the widow of the president’s son Beau Biden, as the previously unknown recipient of payments from Biden family associate John Robinson Walker, who wired money to Biden family members after receiving $3 million from a China company. Hallie Biden and Hunter Biden, the president’s younger son, were romantically linked for a while after Beau Biden’s death. The House Oversight Committee quietly subpoenaed Bank of America for the financial records of three of Hunter Biden’s aides, including Walker, on February 27, which is how it obtained those records.
“It is unclear what services were provided to obtain this excessive amount of money,” Republican Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said in a statement.
House Republicans say those transactions raise questions about foreign influence on the Biden family, but there is still no conclusive evidence that Joe Biden was involved in his son’s business affairs and no indication that he abused his power in public. service to help my family make money. President Biden has previously denied involvement in his son’s overseas business dealings.
A spokesman for Hunter Biden’s legal team dismissed the memo.
“Here we are again with Rep. Comer taking something old and trying to make it new by wrapping it in a wild and baseless right-wing conspiracy,” the spokesman said. “Hunter Biden, a private citizen with every right to pursue his own business ventures, joined several business partners in seeking a joint venture with a private, legitimate energy company in China. As part of this joint venture, Hunter received his share of bona fide seed funds, which he shared with his uncle James Biden and Hallie Biden, with whom he was associated at the time, and cost sharing.”
Senate Republicans in 2020 first detailed how Walker made wire transfers to Hunter Biden and the president’s brother, James, after receiving $3 million from Shanghai-based State Energy HK Limited.
The GOP compiled the memo after obtaining bank records from a Biden associate as a result of a subpoena in its investigation. Comer earlier this week teased some of the findings, saying a third Biden family member had been identified as part of the family’s overseas business dealings, which apparently involved Hallie Biden. Halley Biden received two separate payments from Walker totaling $35,000 in 2017, according to the memo, but only one of those payments came after Walker received the wire message from the Chinese company, multiple sources familiar with the matter told CNN with transactions.
White House spokesman Ian Sams accused Comer of deciding to “go after” Beau Biden’s widow.
“Instead of strangely attacking the president’s family, perhaps House Republicans should focus on working with the president to get results for American families on important priorities like cutting costs and strengthening health care,” Sams said.
The GOP memo reveals that Walker and his company, Robinson Walker, LLC, received a $3 million wire transfer from a Chinese company in March 2017 and then transferred approximately $1,065,692 to various bank accounts linked to members of the Biden family, for a period of three months.
The memo also seeks to raise questions about a wire transfer Hunter Biden received when Joe Biden was vice president. According to the memo, Walker received a wire transfer worth $179,836.86 from a company with an overseas bank account in November 2015, transferred $59,900 of that money to one of his personal checking accounts, and sent the same amount to Hunter Biden .
The memo also identified a bank account identified only as “Biden” that also received wire transfers, which the GOP promised to investigate further. In a statement, a spokesperson for Hunter Biden’s legal team said, “The accounts listed so dramatically by Rep. Comer belong to Hunter, his uncle, and Halley — no one else.”
In response to Thursday’s memo, top Democrat Jamie Raskin of Maryland raised questions about why Comer would not investigate foreign influence in the Trump administration. He said in a statement to CNN, “Chairman Comer’s memo proved once again that after four years of investigations by Senate and House Republicans into Hunter Biden, they have found no connection to the President of the United States or anyone at all.” is a public servant.”
Raskin first disclosed the subpoenas earlier this week and raised questions about their broad scope, but did not mention Walker’s payments to the Bidens.
“They pry into private details about Mr. Walker and his family’s finances: how much he pays for his child’s dance lessons, when he’s been in the hospital, how many parking tickets he’s paid, how often he eats at Papa John’s or coffee at Starbucks and how much he spends on groceries at Safeway,” he wrote on Sunday.