Long before the Biden administration came to be, and President Joe Biden pushed green energy credits in his Build Back Better spending plan this year, Hunter Biden helped grease the wheels for a Chinese business to buy up key rare-earth minerals used in batteries for electric vehicles.
The New York Times reported Saturday that Hunter Biden was part owner in an investment firm that was involved in a Chinese conglomerate's $3.8 billion purchase of one of the world's largest cobalt deposits in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Biden's spending package passed the House on Friday night and it plans to give away $320 billion in tax credits for companies or consumers who buy electric vehicles, purchase solar panels, or invest in improving the energy efficiency of their buildings.
Cobalt mines are pivotal to China's world dominance in making batteries for those electric vehicles the Build Back Better Plan and Democrats are effectively hoisting on the American people through U.S. taxpayer dollars and government subsidies.
Unwinding the twisting takes of moves, the Times reported Biden was a founding board member of BHR, which is the Bohai Harvest RST (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund Management Company. It started up in 2013 while Joe Biden was vice president in former President Barack Obama's White House.
Three Americans including Hunter Biden controlled 30% of BHR, while the rest is owned or controlled by Chinese investors, including Bank of China, the Times reported from Chinese regulators' records.
BHR helped finance an Australian coal-mining company controlled by a Chinese state-owned firm, and also assisted a subsidiary of a Chinese defense conglomerate in buying a Michigan auto parts maker.
But one of the most lucrative investments was the 2016 purchase and later sale of CATL, a Chinese company that has become a world leader in making electric vehicle batteries. That was Joe Biden's last year as Obama's vice president.
That same year, Chinese mining company China Molybdenum also paid $2.65 billion to buy Tenke Fungurume, a cobalt and copper mine from American company Freeport-McMoRan. To complete that deal, China Molybdenum sought a partner to buy out a minority stakeholder in the mine, Lundin Mining of Canada.
Hunter Biden's BHR did so for China Molybdenum with $1.14 billion – which came entirely from Chinese state-backed companies – signing an add-on agreement that allowed China Molybdenum to buy BHR's share, according to the Times.
China Molybdenum did so in 2019 when Hunter Biden controlled 10% of the firm through Skaneateles LLC, a company based in Washington, D.C., according to the report.
When asked by the Times if the president was aware of his son's ties to the deal, a White House spokesman said, "No."
Hunter Biden's lawyer Chris Clark told the Times his client "no longer holds any interest, directly or indirectly, in either BHR or Skaneateles."
Chinese records removed Hunter Biden from BHR's board as of April 2020, right around the time his father become the Democrat's presidential nominee against former President Donald Trump, who was battling the height of the COVID-19 pandemic that was discovered in Wuhan, China.
Neither Hunter Biden nor current BHR executives have responded to the Times' request for comment.
"We don't know Hunter Biden, nor are we aware of his involvement in BHR," China Molybdenum spokesman Vincent Zhou wrote in an email to the Times.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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