By CASEY HARPER
THE CENTER SQUARE
(The Center Square) – The Hunter Biden investigation reached a new level in recent days after lawmakers announced that millions of dollars were transferred from a Chinese energy company with much of it ending up in the hands of the Biden family and associates.
Now, critics say the Hunter Biden scandal could jeopardize the president’s reelection hopes.
“The promise of Joe Biden the candidate was a return to normal. He presented himself as the kindly older guy who had seen and heard everything and would be a transition away from the tumult of Trump,” Republican strategist and Co-founder of South & Hill Strategies Colin Reed told The Center Square. “He wasn’t going to light the world on fire, but he wasn’t going to wreck the car either. The reality of Joe Biden the president has been anything but, especially as the saga of Biden Inc. continues to unfold in real time. It’s beyond clear at this point that the questions cannot simply be dismissed as fake news or politically motivated.”
In a bombshell report last week, House Oversight Committee Chair Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., said financial records show that Biden family members Hunter Biden, James Biden, Hallie Biden, and another unknown “Biden” received $1.3 million in payments from accounts related to Rob Walker, a Biden family associate.
“Questions about the intersection of money and influence sunk the presidential hopes of Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden would be wise to heed those lessons, particularly now that the latest shoe to drop involves purported payments from Chinese business interests,” Mr. Reed added.
The entire scandal developed another layer Friday when Hunter Biden filed a lawsuit against the computer repair shop owner, John Paul Mac Isaac, who handed his laptop over to law enforcement after discovering questionable material on it and being unable to reach Hunter Biden.
That lawsuit, though, confirms that the laptop did come from Hunter Biden and not from Russian disinformation efforts, as much of the media and intelligence experts asserted in 2020. Those assertions were used to clamp down on and even censor the story during the 2020 presidential election cycle, possibly affecting the outcome.
Now, the ongoing scandal has provided steady fodder for President Biden’s critics, something that is all but certain to continue if the president runs for reelection.
“The only thing Hunter Biden adds to the equation was access to his father,” U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz said after the news broke.
And lawmakers have shown little sign of slowing the investigation. Rep. Comer sent a letter Friday to call on John “Rob” Walker to appear for a transcribed interview.
Mr. Walker is an associate of the Biden family who the committee says was connected to bank accounts in the Biden network that received over $1 million. The committee said that “most of the payments to the Biden family came after Rob Walker received a $3 million wire from a Chinese energy company.”
“Rob Walker is a key witness in our investigation of President Biden’s involvement in his family’s business schemes,” the letter said. “After receiving a $3 million dollar payout from a Chinese energy company two months after Vice President Biden left office, Rob Walker then sent over a million dollars in incremental payments to Biden family accounts and a similar amount to another Biden family associate. These records reveal that the three parties likely all received a third of the money from China and it is unclear what services were provided in return. When speaking about dealings with the Biden family, Rob Walker once said that exposing him would ‘bury all of us, man.’ Why? The Oversight Committee has many questions for Rob Walker and we look forward to getting answers for the American people.”
