New testimony by a former business partner to Hunter Biden confirms that investors in China, Mexico, And Kazakhstan were buying political influence with President Joe Biden
Republicans are desperately trying to re-fuel their impeachment investigation of President Joe Biden by hyping incarcerated liars and con men, say the media and Democratic officials. On Tuesday, a Justice Department special counsel indicted and imprisoned a Republican witness for allegedly lying, and on Friday, Republican Congressional investigators visited an Alabama prison to take testimony from a man named Jason Galanis, who is in prison for securities fraud and other crimes. “Galanis’ jailhouse interview,” writes the Independent, “marks just the latest example of Republicans seeking information from shady characters amid the so-far floundering impeachment inquiry.”
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) agrees. “Republicans just had their impeachment investigation blown up when their star witness was indicted for peddling Russian disinformation about Joe Biden,” he told Public. “So it’s pretty on-brand that now they’re relying on a convicted, imprisoned felon as their next star witness.”
But much of what Galanis is saying matches what has long been known about the influence peddling by the president’s son, Hunter Biden, including to the Chinese government. “In 2014,” he said in a statement to Congressional investigators, “I agreed with Hunter and Devon that the Burnham & Company would be enhanced by forming a partnership” with a “$300 billion Chinese financial services company closely connected to the Chinese Communist Party.”
A Chinese company paid $1.3 million to the president’s son (Hunter), brother (James), and daughter-in-law (Hallie) through a third party, Congressional investigators discovered.
From 2012 to 2015, Galanis was a business partner to Hunter Biden and Devon Archer, who was convicted along with Galanis of defrauding an Indian tribe. But ten years ago, Biden, Archer, and Galanis sought to “create a financial empire,” according to Politico’s Ben Schreckinger in his 2021 book, The Bidens.
At the heart of that financial empire was selling access to President Biden, says Galanis. “Our objective was to build a diversified private equity platform, which would be anchored by a globally known Wall Street brand [Burnham and Co.] together with a globally known political name,” he said in his statement to investigators, a copy of which Public obtained.
As for the other Republican witness, Alexander Smirnov, his indictment and incarceration last week by Special Counsel David Weiss offers more troubling questions than reassuring answers. According to Weiss, Smirnov “provided false derogatory information” to FBI agents about the Bidens in June 2020.
But it’s not clear why the FBI chose to indict and incarcerate Smirnov after serving for 14 years as what the FBI considered a reliable witness. “I don’t recall ever seeing a false-statements case such as this,” noted former Department of Justice Assistant Attorney Andrew McCarthy.
