Barr Worked to Keep Hunter Biden Probes From Public View During Election
By: Sadie Gurman and Rebecca Davis O'Brien (WSJ)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Attorney General William Barr has known about a disparate set of investigations involving Hunter Biden's business and financial dealings since at least this spring, a person familiar with the matter said, and worked to avoid their public disclosure during the heated election campaign.
Republicans and President Trump have pressed Mr. Barr for months to pursue Mr. Biden, especially as his father, Joe Biden, gained momentum in his ultimately successful bid for president. Mr. Barr has staved off pressure from Republicans in Congress for information into the investigations, the person said, without elaborating on his actions.
One investigation became public this week after federal investigators served a subpoena on Hunter Biden. The subpoena sought detailed financial information in connection with a criminal tax investigation by the U.S. attorney's office in Delaware, according to people familiar with the matter.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan had also been looking at Hunter Biden's business and financial dealings, as part of a broader criminal investigation that two people familiar with the matter described as an international financial investigation that had been going on for at least a year. Hunter Biden is implicated in that investigation but was never a specific target for criminal prosecution, the people said. They declined to provide details on the substance of the probe.
The federal scrutiny dates back to 2018, the people familiar with the matter said.
Neither the Delaware nor the Manhattan investigation implicates President-elect Biden, according to people familiar with the matter.
Hunter Biden said in a statement Wednesday that his lawyer advised him about the investigation into his “tax affairs” and said he had acted legally and appropriately. His lawyer, George Mesires, didn’t respond to questions on Thursday.
The Biden transition team has declined to say when Joe Biden learned of the investigation. A statement circulated by that team on Wednesday said President-elect Biden is “proud of his son, who has fought through difficult challenges, including the vicious personal attacks of recent months, only to emerge stronger.”
While the investigations in Delaware and Manhattan proceeded, investigators tried to keep the cases out of public view by taking few visible steps in the weeks before the November election, recognizing the impact their work could have, said one of the people familiar with the matter.
Mr. Barr was aware of the investigations involving Hunter Biden before the spring, the person said, though it isn’t clear when or how he first learned of the inquiries.
Mr. Trump has fumed about Mr. Barr for a number of reasons including his acknowledgment last week that the Justice Department hadn’t found widespread evidence of election fraud that would reverse Mr. Biden’s victory.
On Thursday night, Mr. Trump tweeted his frustration about the Justice Department and the FBI’s failure to disclose the Hunter Biden investigation earlier. “Why didn’t the Fake News Media, the FBI and the DOJ report the Biden matter BEFORE the Election,” he wrote.
Justice Department guidelines advise investigators against taking overt actions in a run-up to an election so as not to be seen as affecting the outcome.
Mr. Trump talked of involving Mr. Barr when he urged the president of Ukraine in a July 2019 phone call to announce an investigation into Joe Biden and his son. Mr. Trump said he would direct his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and Mr. Barr to contact the Ukrainian president. The Justice Department said Mr. Trump never asked Mr. Barr to contact the Ukrainians. The request ultimately led to Mr. Trump’s impeachment by the House.
Appeals from Republicans to investigate Hunter Biden stepped up in the weeks leading up to the election. After a Republican Senate investigation in September produced a report on Hunter Biden’s finances and overseas business interests, several Republican lawmakers demanded that the Justice Department investigate. Rep. Jim Jordan (R, Ohio), for example, the ranking member of the House Judiciary panel, wrote to Federal Bureau of Investigation director Christopher Wray asking what steps the FBI had taken to investigate the information in the “explosive report.”
An FBI spokeswoman said the bureau responded to the letter and declined to comment further.
On Oct. 19, Mr. Trump’s Republican allies in Congress urged Mr. Barr to appoint a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden and his father, and demanded that Mr. Barr respond within five days.
A day later, asked on Fox News whether he supported tapping a special prosecutor , Mr. Trump said: “We’ve got to get the attorney general to act. He’s got to act, and he’s got to act fast. He’s got to appoint somebody. This is major corruption and this has to be known about before the election.”
he tax investigation into Hunter Biden was sparked in part by reports of suspicious activity filed by a bank that handled foreign transactions related to him, a person familiar with the matter said.
Mr. Biden, a lawyer, has had various sources of income from the U.S. and overseas. In addition to legal work in recent years, he has been a partner in some U.S.-based investment companies.
His earnings from work outside the U.S. included a board seat for around five years until April 2019 at Ukraine gas company Burisma Holdings, where he was paid roughly $50,000 a month for his work.
Mr. Biden also did advisory work for China CEFC Energy Co., as the company pursued deals in Europe and the Middle East, and in 2017 he was a shareholder in a venture with that Chinese company as it sought a foothold in the U.S. While the joint venture never got off the ground, the Senate Republican report in September alleged an entity linked to CEFC paid Mr. Biden’s law firm millions of dollars for legal and advisory work.
Around the time CEFC was trying to break into the U.S., its activity became a focus of a corruption case brought by the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, which resulted in the 2018 conviction of a former Hong Kong official on charges that he bribed African officials to secure business benefits for CEFC. The company, which is now effectively defunct, wasn’t charged in the U.S. corruption case.
Mr. Biden is also a 10% shareholder in a Shanghai private-equity firm and earlier sat on its board, though the board position was unpaid and he is among investors who haven’t recouped their investment, say people with knowledge of the situation. His investment was $420,000 for 10% of the firm, which owns stakes in several companies, most in China.
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I believe Barr did the ethically correct thing by delaying any announcement until after the election, although there is that side of me that wishes he were not so apolitical. He won't get any credit for doing the right thing.
No pictures or cartoons.
barr should negotiate a bargain rate pardon thru SIL jared while they're still semi-affordable, since barr's legal career is pretty much finished anyway ...
I have an idea!
Why don't we just get Judge Sullivan to litigate Hunter Biden into bankruptcy
why not, those types of legal tactics always worked for barr's incompetent boss ..
Judge Sullivan has a boss?
After he said no evidence of election fraud, no way will Trump give him a pardon.
But that's not what he said. He said that the Justice Department has uncovered no voting fraud “on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election." That's a bit different than no evidence.
Barr Acknowledges Justice Dept. Has Found No Widespread Voter Fraud - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Of course not. The Democrats, the lame stream media, and their sheeple followers are already dismissing the investigation. They are mad at Barr for even letting it start- even if he kept it under wraps.
What a disgrace the national press corps has been. They buried the story. Social media censored it, locking the New York Post account.
Amazing how they've given up all pretense of objectivity and just brazenly lie for Democrats now.
No more pretense, since that day he came down the escalator.
Yes, Bill Barr followed the correct course. Unlike the preceding administration.
What has been interesting is how the press has seemed to lack any curiosity. We all know how James Comey betrayed any sort of Justice Dept. integrity and independence. But the press was all over the rumors and allegations. The silence of the press this time has been deafening.
It stinks from here to Maine and it's obvious to everyone. The reason national media is not trusted. Do you think the media knew months before the election that Swalwell had been compromised?
The Biden campaign used Barr's silence on Hunter to go out and call it all Russian disinformation.
There are others who have waited until after the election knowing that about 500,000 strategically well paced votes could decide it.
Barr always does the right thing.
Unfortunately TDS sufferers don't care about the right thing; they just care that Barr works under the Trump Administration. Guilt by association.
Now if it been one of the Obama DOJ involving anything on Trump; the media would have a enough leaks to know exactly what they wanted them to know. Legality be damned.
Perhaps China Joe could meet Barr on a plane and the investigation will just disappear.
Oh wait, Barr isn't Loretta Lynch.
Once again an alleged puppet of Trump does exactly the opposite of what he wanted, but the cognitive dissonance doesn't seem to bother anyone.
In normal times before Trump government did not normally comment on ongoing investigations but I guess that now if Trump might have something polotical to gain out of it then you believe that normal protocols should have been ignored...
Have you ever heard of James Comey?
I didn't say anything about what I think should happen. I'm commenting on the fact that we see accusations all the time that Barr is this corrupt tool who does whatever Trump wants in spite of ample evidence to the contrary.
It seems that bottom line push comes to shove that Barr was a part of the deep state after all.
As the younger Biden is obviously GUILTY as sin, Joe should resign as President elect, cause every one Knows , he doesn't deserve a trial, while, all the while, so many that remain in Denial of our current Presidents Guilt, on ANYTHING, are quick to convict, as hot air floats the conspiracy theory's, that are tough to even theorize, how guilty of "in know sense" they actually R's as the Party should be shut and go down with its' Captain, as they think, Ain't gonna happen, are they dealing with a full all hands so small on deck? Cause the Lowered Barr , Barr and Trump have set, Trumps' the other decks, decked out in a Bovine Scoop, on the Bovine Deck, poop. Poop decks decked & filled the hallowed Halls with Holley and folly , jokers, and Wild Cards that have played US, as the deck gets shuffled yet again, we find until we change our election process from the Party of Two, i have reservations, as to when and where our pols , could Ever Be True to thy selves, cause they sure as Hell ain't been TRUE to me , or you
Oh, that would fit the script perfectly, then Kamala Harris would become president. A Fait accompli !
Considering your prediction batting average the chances of that happening are basically zero...
My predictions?
Let's see - I predicted the dems would get something dirty going on Kavanaugh.
And I'll let igknrantzrulz tell you all about the other one!
Two Words - Andrew McCabe...
Two more - Criminal referral
And another two - Kevin Clinesmith