Biden Inc: Foreign Deals, Impeachment, and the Pardon

“Biden Inc.” is the shorthand, popularized by a 2019 Politico investigation, for the pattern of business ventures pursued by members of Joe Biden’s family — chiefly his son Hunter and his brother James — that intersected with his decades in public office. Congressional investigators alleged the family collected more than $27 million from foreign sources by trading on the Biden name. After a years-long House impeachment inquiry, two federal prosecutions of Hunter Biden, and a sweeping presidential pardon, no direct evidence emerged that Joe Biden personally participated in criminal wrongdoing or took foreign payments.

Where the Phrase Comes From

Politico used “Biden, Inc.” in an August 2019 investigation into the family’s business history. The label stuck because it captured a recurring pattern: relatives entering ventures whose main asset appeared to be proximity to Joe Biden. A former Paradigm Global Advisors executive told Politico that James Biden had described the hedge fund as a vehicle for investors who “want to invest in Joe Biden,” claiming they had “investors lined up in a line of 747s filled with cash.”¹

By the time Joe Biden reached the White House, the phrase had come to cover a much larger set of transactions across Ukraine, China, Russia, Romania, and Kazakhstan, and it became the organizing frame for the House Oversight Committee’s investigation.

The Foreign Deals

Burisma and Ukraine

In the spring of 2014, Hunter Biden and business partner Devon Archer joined the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas company owned by oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky. Each was paid roughly $1 million per year, about $83,000 per month.² Archer later testified that Burisma “would have gone out of business” without the Biden name attached, because Hunter’s family connection gave the company the ability to “navigate D.C.” and deterred legal pressure.³

The arrangement became politically explosive because of its timing. While Hunter Biden sat on the board, Vice President Biden publicly pressured Ukraine to fire prosecutor general Viktor Shokin, who had at one point been investigating Zlochevsky. Shokin’s removal was also backed by the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, and other Western governments, which regarded him as corrupt. Archer testified that he had “no knowledge” of the vice president altering U.S. foreign policy to benefit his son and was “not aware” of Hunter ever asking his father to change policy.⁴

CEFC China Energy

More than half of Hunter Biden’s earnings between 2013 and 2018 — about $5.8 million — came from Chinese business interests, according to an NBC News analysis of his hard drive data.⁵ The central relationship was with CEFC China Energy and its chairman, Ye Jianming. A venture called Hudson West III, funded by CEFC, paid Hunter Biden’s company Owasco P.C. nearly $4.8 million over roughly one year.

In March 2017, less than two months after Joe Biden left the vice presidency, a CEFC-connected entity wired $3 million to a Biden associate’s account. The House Oversight Committee reported that over the following months, Biden family members received approximately $1.07 million of those funds.² Ye also reportedly gifted Hunter Biden a diamond valued at $80,000.

CEFC executive Patrick Ho Chi Ping was convicted in December 2018 under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for a global bribery and money laundering scheme.⁶ Hunter Biden served as Ho’s defense attorney and received $1 million from Hudson West III with a memo line referencing that representation.⁵ Ye Jianming himself disappeared from public view in early 2018 after Chinese authorities placed him under investigation for suspected economic crimes, and CEFC was subsequently dismantled by creditors.⁷

Russia, Romania, and Kazakhstan

On February 14, 2014, Russian oligarch Yelena Baturina wired $3.5 million to Rosemont Seneca Thornton, a firm co-owned by Hunter Biden and Devon Archer. That spring, Baturina attended a Washington dinner with then-Vice President Biden.²

Romanian businessman Gabriel Popoviciu routed more than $3 million to a Biden associate’s account through Robinson Walker, LLC, with roughly $1 million reaching Biden family accounts. Sixteen of the seventeen payments landed while Joe Biden was vice president. In April 2014, Kazakh oligarch Kenes Rakishev wired $142,300 to a Rosemont Seneca entity; the next day, the funds were used to buy a sports car for Hunter Biden.²

How the Money Moved

Congressional investigators identified a network of more than 20 entities the family used to receive and route payments, including Rosemont Seneca Partners, Rosemont Seneca Thornton, Rosemont Seneca Bohai, Hudson West III, Hudson West V, Owasco P.C., and Robinson Walker, LLC.⁸

The Oversight Committee described a recurring pattern. Biden associates would receive large deposits from foreign sources, then move smaller, incremental payments to Biden family bank accounts. The committee called these transactions “complicated and seemingly unnecessary” and said they were designed to “conceal the source and total amount received.”⁹ U.S. banks flagged Biden family transactions in at least 150 suspicious activity reports.¹⁰ Legal analysts have noted that suspicious activity reports are routine monitoring tools banks file for unusual transactions and do not themselves constitute allegations of criminal conduct.¹¹

James Biden’s business activity generated its own set of questions. He worked as a consultant to the hospital chain Americore Health, whose pitch materials described him as the “Brother and Campaign Finance Chair of former Vice President Joe Biden.”¹² On March 1, 2018, Americore wired James Biden $200,000; the same day, he wrote a $200,000 check to Joe Biden that the White House described as repayment of a personal loan. Americore later filed for bankruptcy, and federal prosecutors charged others connected to the company in a $100 million Medicare fraud conspiracy. James Biden has not been charged, and his attorney stated in March 2024 that he was not under federal investigation in Florida or Pennsylvania.¹³

What Witnesses Said About Joe Biden’s Role

The central factual dispute is what, if anything, Joe Biden did for his family’s clients.

Devon Archer told the House Oversight Committee in July 2023 that Hunter would occasionally put his father on speakerphone during meetings with investors or business associates, estimating this happened roughly 20 times. Archer described the content as “generally about the weather” and “nonspecifics relative to business,” saying he never heard them discuss the substance of Hunter’s deals.⁴ He confirmed Joe Biden attended two dinners at Cafe Milano in Washington in 2014 and 2015 where foreign business associates were present. Archer said the Biden “brand” had inherent value but that he was not aware of any wrongdoing by Joe Biden.

Tony Bobulinski, a former partner in a planned CEFC-connected venture called SinoHawk Holdings, told a starkly different story. He testified under oath that Joe Biden was “the brand being sold by the Biden family” and identified him as “the big guy” referenced in a May 2017 email allocating “10 held by H for the big guy” in a proposed equity split.¹⁴ Bobulinski said he met Joe Biden in Los Angeles in May 2017 and that Biden was “plainly familiar” with Hunter’s business plans.

Eight other business partners, including James Gilliar (the author of the “big guy” email), Rob Walker, and Mervyn Yan, told House investigators that Joe Biden had no involvement in Hunter’s deals, no connection to payments or loans, and never discussed business with them. Walker told the FBI in 2020 that Bobulinski was “trying to take little pieces of emails” to build a misleading narrative.¹⁴ Gilliar himself told the Wall Street Journal that Joe Biden was not involved in the deal.

The Impeachment Inquiry and Its Collapse

In September 2023, then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy opened a formal impeachment inquiry. Three House committees — Oversight and Accountability, Judiciary, and Ways and Means — spent nearly a year on the investigation and released a 291-page report on August 19, 2024. The report alleged that Biden engaged in a “conspiracy to monetize his office of public trust to enrich his family” and that the family and associates received more than $27 million from foreign entities and $8 million in “questionable loans from Democratic benefactors.”¹⁵

The report acknowledged a critical limit: it “does not provide any direct evidence that the president has directly or knowingly participated in criminal wrongdoing or benefited financially from his son’s dealings.”¹⁵ No articles of impeachment were drafted, introduced, or voted on. The full House never acted.

A significant blow to the inquiry’s foundation came in February 2024, when Special Counsel David Weiss charged FBI informant Alexander Smirnov with fabricating allegations that Burisma executives had paid Joe and Hunter Biden $5 million each. Those allegations, recorded in an FD-1023 form, had been among the most prominent pieces of evidence cited by House Republicans.¹⁶ Smirnov later pleaded guilty to a felony false-statements charge and a separate tax evasion count, admitting the bribery claims were fabricated. Prosecutors established that his contacts with Burisma were routine and began in 2017, after the events he had described.¹⁷

Separately, IRS criminal investigators Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler came forward in 2023 as whistleblowers alleging that the Justice Department interfered in the Hunter Biden tax investigation. They said investigators were prohibited from searching Joe Biden’s home where Hunter had lived, blocked from interviewing Biden grandchildren about tax returns, and discouraged from pursuing leads that might implicate the vice president.¹⁸ On May 15, 2023, Shapley’s entire IRS team was removed from the case at the DOJ’s request.¹⁹ Weiss said he followed standard processes and was never denied authority to bring charges.

Hunter Biden’s Convictions and the Pardon

Hunter Biden faced two federal prosecutions brought by Weiss. In June 2024, a Delaware jury convicted him on federal gun charges for lying about his crack cocaine addiction on a background check form when he bought a firearm in October 2018. In September 2024, he pleaded guilty in the Central District of California to tax offenses involving the failure to pay at least $1.4 million in federal taxes for 2016 through 2019.²⁰

On December 1, 2024, before sentencing in either case, President Biden signed a “full and unconditional pardon” covering any federal offenses Hunter Biden committed or may have committed between January 1, 2014, and December 1, 2024.²¹ The scope reached well beyond the two prosecuted cases and covered the entire decade during which congressional investigators had alleged foreign influence-peddling.

Biden said his son had been “selectively and unfairly prosecuted,” called the prosecutions “a miscarriage of justice” driven by “raw politics,” and reversed his earlier assurances that he would neither pardon nor commute his son’s sentence.²² President-elect Donald Trump called the pardon “such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice.”²⁰

The Special Counsel’s Final Word

On January 13, 2025, Weiss released a 27-page final report, transmitted to Congress and made public by Attorney General Merrick Garland. Weiss pushed back on the president’s characterizations, writing that “these prosecutions were the culmination of thorough, impartial investigations, not partisan politics.” He noted that eight judges had rejected defense claims that the prosecutions were the product of selective or vindictive motives.²³

The report suggested additional charges could have been considered regarding Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings but said the pardon’s scope made it “inappropriate to discuss whether additional charges are warranted.” Weiss criticized the president for using the pardon as “an opportunity to malign the public servants at the Department of Justice based solely on false accusations,” saying no prior president who pardoned a family member had attacked Justice Department personnel in the process.²⁴

One other financial thread drew ethics attention. Hunter Biden’s paintings, priced as high as $500,000, were sold under a White House-brokered arrangement meant to keep buyer identities confidential. Gallerist Georges Bergès testified that Hunter Biden had initially asked to know who his buyers were and eventually learned identities behind roughly 70 percent of the art’s value.²⁵ Democratic donor Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali, who bought $94,000 in artwork, later received a White House appointment to the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad; her attorney said the appointment was unrelated to the purchases and was recommended by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi.²⁶

Where Things Stand

As of mid-2025, the House Oversight Committee continues to investigate the Biden family, though the focus has shifted. Chairman James Comer has moved to questions about President Biden’s mental capacity during his final year in office and the administration’s use of the presidential autopen to sign clemency actions during Biden’s last hours as president. In July 2025, Anthony Bernal, a former senior aide to Jill Biden, appeared for a closed-door deposition under subpoena and invoked the Fifth Amendment. Biden’s former White House physician, Kevin O’Connor, also declined to answer questions, citing the Fifth Amendment and doctor-patient confidentiality.²⁷ Comer has indicated Jill Biden and Kamala Harris may also be subpoenaed.

The record left behind by “Biden Inc.” is layered. Foreign money moved to Biden-connected entities in amounts congressional investigators put above $27 million. Hunter Biden was convicted on gun charges and pleaded guilty on tax charges, then received a pardon covering an entire decade of conduct. And the House inquiry that gathered the evidence conceded it could not directly tie Joe Biden to criminal wrongdoing, while the special counsel who prosecuted Hunter Biden said the cases had nothing to do with politics.

1
Politico. Biden, Inc.
2
House Committee on Oversight and Accountability. The Bidens’ Influence Peddling Timeline
3
House Committee on Oversight and Accountability. Comer Releases Devon Archer’s Transcribed Interview Transcript
4
The Hill. Five Takeaways From Devon Archer’s Interview With House Oversight
5
NBC News. Analysis of Hunter Biden’s Hard Drive Shows Firm Took in $11 Million
6
Washington Examiner. Court Upholds Conviction of Chinese Businessman Linked to Hunter Biden
7
Reuters. China’s CEFC Founder Ye Named in Corruption Case
8
House Committee on Oversight and Accountability. Biden Family Investigation
9
Wall Street Journal. House Republicans Report on Biden Family Business Dealings
10
PBS NewsHour. Republicans Are Using Financial Records to Investigate Hunter Biden
11
ABC News. Republican Allegations and Evidence in Biden Impeachment Inquiry
12
Politico. How the President’s Brother Became Embroiled in a Hospital Fiasco
13
Politico. Jim Biden Business and Federal Investigation
14
Forbes. Who Is Tony Bobulinski
15
Lawfare. House Committees Release Impeachment Inquiry Report on President Biden
16
Axios. Biden Special Counsel Charges FBI Informant Alexander Smirnov
17
PBS NewsHour. Former FBI Informant to Plead Guilty to Lying About Fake Bribery Scheme Involving the Bidens
18
PBS NewsHour. IRS Whistleblowers Claim Justice Department Meddled in Hunter Biden Investigation
19
GovInfo. House Report 118-646
20
NPR. President Biden Pardons Son Hunter
21
U.S. Department of Justice. Pardons Granted by President Joseph Biden
22
The American Presidency Project. Statement on the Presidential Pardon for R. Hunter Biden
23
Politico. Special Counsel Hunter Biden Report
24
NPR. Hunter Biden Special Counsel Report
25
Politico. Hunter Biden’s Art Sales
26
NBC News. Art Dealer Georges Bergès Says Hunter Biden Made Unusual Request
27
ABC News. House Oversight Chair Says Jill Biden and Harris Should Be Subpoenaed