House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Thursday vowed to “get to the bottom” of issues surrounding Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop — after the first son confirmed it was his by calling for criminal investigations into a computer repairman and others who distributed the content of.
McCarthy (Calif.) was asked at a news conference on Capitol Hill how Hunter’s new request for federal and state criminal investigations would affect House Republicans’ investigations into President Biden’s role in the international business deals of Hunter and first brother James Biden.
“I don’t think at all, I think he is late in his tactics. I think it’s a lawyer tactic to try to stop something,” McCarthy said.
“The only thing I’ll say from that, he now recognizes it’s his laptop. So it was a little slower than the rest of the papers and Twitter and the others, but now we know it’s true,” the House Speaker continued.
“And I think the surveys here, the uniqueness is you’re going to have Republicans and Democrats, and we’re going to get to the bottom of all of them.”
White House press secretary Karin Jean-Pierre declined to comment directly Thursday on Hunter Biden’s request for criminal investigations by his father’s Justice Department subordinates — but said the elder Biden believes in action by an “independent” agency.
“This is a president, and I’ve said this before, who believes in the independence of the Justice Department or any law enforcement investigation and he’s been very clear about that,” Jean-Pierre said at her regular briefing. “He believes that it should not be politicized, as he has said for the last two years, starting with the campaign, and he believes that any investigation should be independent.”
Hunter Biden’s attorney, Abby Lowell, tried to put the genie back in the bottle Thursday afternoon, arguing that Hunter did not authenticate the laptop when he called for criminal investigations of computer repairman John Paul McIsaac and others — including former President Donald Trump. attorney Rudy Giuliani, who provided laptop files to The Post in October 2020;
“These letters do not corroborate Mac Isaac’s or others’ versions of a so-called laptop,” Lowell said. “They are confronting their conduct in seeking, manipulating and disseminating what they claim is Mr. Biden’s personal data, wherever they claim to have received it.”
However, Lowell did not dispute that Hunter left the laptop at McIsaac’s former store in Delaware in his letters Wednesday to Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings and U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Homeland Security Matthew Olsen, although he suggested that some files may have been tampered with.
In fact, Lowell wrote to Jennings that “McIsaac chose to work with President Donald Trump’s personal attorney to weaponize Mr. Biden’s personal computer data against his father, Joseph R. Biden, by illegally causing the personal given by Mr. Biden to the New York Post.”
“This failed dirty political trick directly resulted in the disclosure, exploitation and manipulation of Mr. Biden’s private and personal information,” Lowell wrote. “McIsaac’s deliberate, reckless and illegal conduct allowed hundreds of gigabytes of Mr. Biden’s personal data to be trafficked, without discretion, onto the Internet.”
Lowell also wrote that “[t]The facts and circumstances show that Mr. McIsaac and others with whom he participated or conspired either did not have the authority to access, copy and disseminate Mr. Biden’s data or exceeded the basic authorization that a request for repair would involve.”
In his letter to Olsen, Lowell wrote, again without disputing that the laptop was Hunter’s, that “by McIsaac’s own admission, he caused the transfer in interstate commerce of at least two external hard drives containing computer data of Mr. Biden.”
Lowell alleged that Mac Isaac and others may have violated Delaware laws against theft, possession of stolen property, misuse of computer system information, unauthorized access to a computer system, destruction of computer equipment and theft of services computers.
The first son’s new lawyer also claimed that Mac Isaac and others may have violated federal laws against “intentional access[ing] an unauthorized computer,” transferring stolen property and disclosing legally protected information.
The Post’s first laptop bombshell in October 2020 revealed that Vadym Pozharskyi, an executive at Ukrainian gas company Burisma, emailed Hunter in 2015 to thank him for the “opportunity to meet your father” — as opposed to Biden. 2019 claims that he had “never spoken” to his son about “his business dealings abroad”.
Hunter earned up to $1 million a year to serve on Burisma’s board from 2014 to 2019, starting when his father became head of the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy. Visitor logs show that Joe Biden met with his son’s partner, Devon Archer, in 2014 around the time both Hunter Biden and Archer joined Burisma’s board of directors.
Social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter, initially censored The Post’s report as prominent Democrats claimed the laptop was Russian disinformation. The Biden campaign has vaguely denied that the Joe Biden-Pozarski meeting took place.
Joe Biden even claimed in October. 22, 2020, in the second and final presidential debate that The Post’s report on Hunter’s laptop was “a Russian plan” and that Giuliani was “being fed information that is Russian.”
Hunter later said in 2021 — after his father became president — that the laptop “certainly” could be his, but that it could also come from “Russian intelligence.”
Mac Isaac says Hunter Biden failed to retrieve the laptop from his store and shared documents showing he provided the original hard drive to the FBI in December 2019. After hearing no updates from federal authorities, he provided a copy of the device to Giuliani’s attorney Bob Costello before the 2020 election and contacted the office of then-Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.).
Mac Isaac provided a copy of a bill of sale showing an abandonment clause that gave him legal ownership of the laptop when it was not repossessed.
Further reporting by The Post confirmed key details in laptop documents. For example, additional files revealed that Joe Biden attended a dinner in DC in 2015 the day before the Burisma executive’s email was sent. A group of his son’s associates, including Pozharsky and a trio from Kazakhstan, who posed for a photo with the Bidens, attended.
Hunter also invited Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina and her husband, former Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov, to dinner. A 2020 report by Republican-led Senate committees alleges that Baturina in 2014 paid $3.5 million to a company associated with Hunter Biden. Baturina is one of a handful of Russian oligarchs who have yet to face sanctions from the Biden administration over Russia’s more than 11-month-old invasion of Ukraine.
A second October 2020 bombshell from The Post described communications about Hunter Biden and his uncle Jim Biden’s business venture with CEFC China Energy. A May 13, 2017 email retrieved from the laptop said the “big guy” would get 10% of the deal.
Hunter and James Biden earned $4.8 million from CEFC China Energy in 2017 and 2018, according to a subsequent Washington Post review of Hunter Biden laptop documents.
Hunter Biden’s former business partner, Tony Bobulinski, claims he discussed the CEFC deal directly with Joe Biden in May 2017. Bobulinski and another former Hunter Biden associate, James Gilliar, identified the president as the big guy
An October 2017 email identifies Joe Biden as a participant in a call about CEFC’s effort to buy natural gas from the US.
Republicans have accused Biden of being too soft on China on issues such as identifying the origin of COVID-19, which has killed more than 1 million Americans, and stopping exports of fentanyl, which killed an estimated 196,000 Americans in 2018-2021 alone.
In a separate Chinese venture, online business filings show the first son still holds a 10 percent stake in China’s state-owned BHR Partners, which it says manages $2.1 billion in assets, despite his father’s insistence that there would be no conflicts related to family and business interests during his presidency.
Hunter co-founded BHR Partners in 2013 within weeks of joining then-Vice President Biden on Air Force Two on an official trip to Beijing, according to the Wall Street Journal. Hunter introduced his dad to BHR CEO Jonathan Lee in a hotel lobby, and Joe Biden later wrote college letters of recommendation for Lee’s children.
The Republican House Oversight Committee is looking into the international business dealings of the Biden family as well as Hunter Biden’s mysterious new art career.
Hunter Biden is reportedly under investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Delaware for possible tax fraud, money laundering, illegal foreign lobbying and lying on a gun purchase form. An associate, Hollywood lawyer and “sugar brother” Kevin Morris, last year returned a tax bill of about $2 million owed by Hunter in an effort to avoid criminal charges. The terms of this gift or loan remain unclear.
