A former associate of the Biden family business made critical but unproven allegations against President Joe Biden during a closed-door House interview Tuesday, resurrecting claims he has been pushing since 2020.
During the last years, Tony Bobulinski apparently shared his story with anyone who would listen, including the Trump campaign. But his loftiest claims — that Joe Biden was deeply involved in his son’s overseas business deals — remain uncorroborated and have been contradicted by other key witnesses.
“Joe Biden was more than a participant and beneficiary of the family business; he was an enabler, although he was protected by an elaborate scheme to maintain plausible deniability,” Bobulinski told House Oversight Committee investigators Tuesday, according to a copy of his opening statement provided to CNN.
He added that he believed that multi-million dollar trade deals obtained by Joe Biden’s son and brother only materialized “because Joe Biden held high office.” He said “the Biden family business was Joe Biden, period” and specifically mentioned Joe Biden’s alleged role in a proposed lucrative deal with a Chinese energy conglomerate.
CNN has not independently verified the underlying evidence Bobulinski says supports his claims. Bobulinski became public in the final weeks of the 2020 race, only after without success peddling his information to journalists, including at the conservative-leaning Wall Street Journal. When the newspaper covered Bobulinski’s public remarks, his history made it clear that the China deal was never reached and that company records “show no role for Joe Biden.”
In his opening statement Tuesday, Bobulinski said he “met personally” with Joe Biden in Los Angeles in May 2017 “on several occasions to discuss the broad contours of our trade relationship.”
House Oversight Chairman James Comer, a Kentucky Republican, praised Bobulinski’s testimony and criticized committee Democrats for how they participated in the interview.
“We will release the transcript soon to provide the American people with more transparency about Joe Biden’s involvement in his family’s shady schemes and Democrats’ efforts to smear Mr. Bobulinski for speaking out,” Comer said in a statement.
As the interview was underway, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, criticized Bobulinski’s credibility, saying he was trying to turn two “meetings” with Joe Biden into meetings substantial business.
“He had two consecutive meetings with President Biden in May 2017 that seemed extremely informal,” Raskin said. “We couldn’t call them meetings. And according to him, they did not involve discussion of Joe Biden and business. So this is a witness who I think can be charitably described as out of control.
“He offers absolutely no testimony indicating any criminal activity on the part of President Biden. He offers no suggestion or evidence that President Biden was involved in Hunter Biden’s businesses,” Raskin added.
Even after he first went public in 2020, none of the federal stakeholders, including the Justice Department, FBI or IRS, contacted him about his testimony, he said Tuesday . He contacted the FBI in October 2020 and sat down for an interview, but they never followed up, he said, and neither did the special prosecutor currently prosecuting Hunter Biden.
Another associate involved with Bobulinski and the president’s son recently threw cold water on Bobulinski’s claims in a separate interview with committee investigators.
The witness, Rob Walker, told House Republicans in January that he did not believe Bobulinski was a credible actor and would never consider working with him again. Walker called Bobulinski’s allegations “stunning” and “absurd.” He speculated that Bobulinski’s motivations were “political.”
“I think he realized that Hunter had moved on without him and he was probably a little upset too,” Walker added, “So that probably added a little fuel to Tony’s fire.”
Walker recalled that Bobulinski called him in October 2020 to discuss the possibility of Hunter Biden’s laptop and did not reveal at the time that the conversation was being recorded or that it would be shared with Fox News. In the recording, Walker allegedly said, “You’re just going to bury us all, man.”
In his January interview with lawmakers, Walker explained that he was not worried about criminal liability, but rather worried that Bobulinski’s antics would reflect poorly on everyone involved.
“I thought it was ridiculous that he would do it — he was going to say something and it made no sense and was stupid and was just going to embarrass everyone,” Walker said.
Bobulinski’s claims also stand in stark contrast to a growing list of other Biden family associates who have said that Joe Biden, as a private citizen and as vice president, was never involved in foreign business relations from his family. Raskin had raised serious questions about Bobulinski’s credibility ahead of Tuesday’s interview.
Republicans quickly pounced on Bobulinski’s claims as they sought to implicate the president in his family’s foreign business dealings as part of their impeachment inquiry, and many praised him ahead of Tuesday’s interview.
But Democrats criticized Republicans for using Bobulinski’s allegations to portray the president as being at the heart of a complex criminal operation, while questioning his ability to serve in light of comments by special prosecutor Robert Hur. final reportwhich paints the portrait of a forgetful commander-in-chief.
“Pick a side,” said Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas. “Either he’s a criminal mastermind or he’s old and weak.” Or it’s neither.
Perhaps the most compelling piece of evidence Bobulinski ever presented was a May 2017 email he exchanged with Hunter Biden and some of their fellow business partners.
In the post, they discuss an equity deal for an upcoming deal involving Chinese energy interests. One of the emails suggests there could be “10 held by H for the big guy,” referring to a 10% stake held by Hunter Biden for his father.
House Republicans have seized on the email, arguing that it proves their thesis that Joe Biden was doing business with his son, and that he had made millions from China.
But Hunter Biden’s lawyers countered that the equity split proposed in the email was “never included in any agreement” and that the split was in fact proposed by Bobulinski, and never even elicited a response from Hunter Biden.
He was set for a much-anticipated interview with the GOP-led Senate Judiciary Committee, weeks before the 2020 election. But that was scrapped when he met with FBI investigators.
Despite providing information to the FBI, federal prosecutors did not cite his documents in the wide-ranging tax indictment filed against Hunter Biden.
The Ministry of Justice has accused Hunter Biden of tax evasion and other financial crimes over many years. (He has pleaded not guilty.) But prosecutors have not supported Republicans’ claims about the Biden family’s alleged influence-peddling schemes.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
