WASHINGTON — New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, the No. 3 House Republican, called Wednesday for the release of records detailing who visits President Biden at his Delaware residences after the Secret Service claimed that no such logs exist.
Stefanik cited Biden’s past meetings with his family’s international business associates and questioned whether similar encounters continue out of public view as Biden spends roughly one-fourth of his presidency in Delaware.
“We already know Hunter Biden and his illegal ties and relationships with outside entities have threatened US national security, and House Republicans are leading the effort for accountability,” Stefanik said. “Now, we must know why this administration continues to obstruct the truth on whether anyone else is influencing this administration.”
“Every American deserves transparency on who is meeting with this president — especially as he has continued to hide from them in his basement in Delaware,” she added. “House Republicans are committed to a government that is accountable, and we will conduct critical oversight into the entire Biden Crime Family.”
Stefanik’s backing increases the likelihood of more robust Republican oversight tactics, such as the use of subpoenas, if the GOP reclaims power in the Nov. 8 midterm elections.
Secret Service deputy director Faron Paramore wrote in a Sept. 27 letter that the protective agency could find no record of visitors to Biden’s Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach homes, where he’s spent all or part of nearly 200 days since taking office in January 2021.
Paramore, denying a Freedom of Information Act appeal from The Post, wrote that “the agency conducted an additional search of relevant program offices for potentially responsive records. This search also produced no responsive records.”
The claim led to an outcry from congressional Republicans who vowed to pursue the matter.
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), who is poised to lead the House Oversight Committee next year if Republicans retake the House, said, “Americans deserve to know who President Biden is meeting with, especially since we know that he routinely met with [first son] Hunter’s business associates during his time as vice president.”
“This administration’s stonewalling and gaslighting must stop,” said Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.). “Next year, House Republicans will conduct a fair and transparent investigation into the Biden family’s influence peddling and deliver the American people the answers they deserve.”
Although the White House says Biden stands by his 2019 claim that he’d “never spoken” with his son Hunter about “his overseas business dealings,” there’s a growing list of evidence to the contrary as federal prosecutors weigh tax fraud, money laundering and unregistered foreign lobbying charges against the first son, who recently paid the IRS about $2 million in back taxes.
The White House did not provide an on-the-record response to The Post’s latest inquiry on Delaware visitor logs, but former press secretary Jen Psaki twice said at briefings that the records won’t be released because they would be an unnecessary invasion of the Biden family’s privacy.
“I can confirm we are not going to be providing information about the comings and goings of the president’s grandchildren or people visiting him in Delaware,” Psaki said last August.
The conservative group Judicial Watch has accused the Secret Service of playing a “shell game” with visitor logs by possessing relevant information but claiming that it belongs to the White House, which is generally exempt from FOIA.
While vice president, Joe Biden, and his son attended a 2015 DC dinner whose guest list included Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina and her husband, former Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov, according to records from Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Baturina is one of a dwindling number of Russian oligarchs yet to face US sanctions over Russia’s seven-month-old invasion of Ukraine. She paid $3.5 million in 2014 to a Hunter Biden-linked firm, according to a 2020 report from GOP-led Senate committees.
At the same 2015 dinner, a document indicates, Joe Biden met with an executive from the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, which paid Hunter Biden up to $1 million per year to serve on its board as his VP father led the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy. And a photo apparently taken at the dinner venue shows Joe Biden and his son with a trio of the then-second son’s Kazakhstani business partners.
Hunter Biden reportedly still owns a 10% stake in the Chinese investment fund BHR Partners, which is controlled in part by Chinese state-owned entities. Hunter Biden co-founded BHR in 2013 about two weeks after flying with his father to Beijing aboard Air Force Two. While in China, Hunter introduced his dad to BHR CEO Jonathan Li. Joe Biden later wrote college recommendation letters for Li’s son and daughter.
In a different Chinese deal, Beijing-linked energy company CEFC paid Hunter Biden and first brother Jim Biden $4.8 million in 2017 and 2018, according to the Washington Post. Former Hunter Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski alleged one month before the 2020 election that Joe Biden was directly involved with the CEFC deal before launching his presidential campaign.
Bobulinski said he spoke with the future president in May 2017 about the project and that Joe Biden was the “big guy” described in an email the same month due to a 10% stake in the initiative. A different business associate, James Gilliar, also identified Joe Biden as the “big guy.”
Republicans say Biden is too soft toward China on a variety of issues, including on Chinese exports of fentanyl, which drove a record 107,000 US drug overdose deaths last year. Biden also rarely mentions an interest in determining the origins of COVID-19, which killed more than 1 million Americans after possibly leaking from a Chinese lab.
Photos and emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop also indicate that Joe Biden 2015 hosted his son and a group of Mexican business associates at the vice president’s official residence. Joe and Hunter Biden posed for a group photo with Mexican billionaires Carlos Slim and Miguel Alemán Velasco.
In 2016, Hunter Biden emailed one of his Mexican associates, apparently while aboard Air Force Two for an official visit to Mexico, complaining that he hadn’t received reciprocal business favors after “I have brought every single person you have ever asked me to bring to the F’ing White House and the Vice President’s house and the inauguration.”
Hunter Biden’s business partner Eric Schwerin also visited the White House and vice president’s residence at least 19 times while Joe Biden was vice president, Obama administration visitor logs show, casting further doubt on Joe Biden’s claims to have been unaware of his son’s business ventures.
At his 2020 impeachment trial for pressuring Ukraine to investigate the Bidens, then-President Trump’s defense team cited visitor logs that showed Joe Biden met with another business partner of his son, Devon Archer, in 2014 around the time both Hunter Biden and Archer joined the Burisma board.
Since his father became president, Hunter Biden launched an art career seeking as much as $500,000 for his novice works. The White House developed a plan for those sales to be “anonymous” to theoretically prevent possible influence-peddling. Hunter received at least $375,000 last year for five prints at a Los Angeles art show attended by one of his father’s ambassador nominees, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.
It’s unclear how many additional sales he may have made.