Biden denies ‘lies’ he talked with son, brother’s business partners — despite evidence of contacts

WASHINGTON — President Biden denied Wednesday that he interacted with his relatives’ foreign business associates — despite photos and other evidence of him doing so — as the House of Representatives prepares to vote on authorizing an impeachment inquiry.

Biden denounced as “lies” reports that he met with son Hunter Biden and brother James Biden’s contacts despite confirmation he interacted while vice president with their Chinese, Kazakhstani, Mexican, Russian and Ukrainian associates.

“I did not. And it’s just a bunch of lies. They’re lies. I did not. They’re lies,” the 81-year-old president said in response to a question from The Post.

Biden’s blanket denial is contradicted by records from Hunter’s abandoned laptop, as well as published photos and numerous witness recollections.

“The President just lied again to the American people,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) responded on X. “FACT: There are at least 22 examples of Joe Biden speaking with or meeting with Hunter Biden’s foreign business associates.”

Johnson is expected to call a House vote as early as this week to authorize the impeachment inquiry into Biden’s role in his family’s dealings during his vice presidency. 

The inquiry began Sept. 12 without a floor vote and the move comes as Biden’s son and brother resist subpoenas demanding their testimony.

Biden’s role in what Republicans call influence-peddling has been contested for years, but there’s substantial evidence that he had contact with his relatives’ associates.

Former Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer testified July 31 to the House Oversight Committee that Joe Biden was put on speakerphone during nearly two dozen of his son’s overseas work meetings.

Archer also said that Biden dined twice while vice president — in 2014 and 2015 — at DC’s Cafe Milano with his son’s Eastern European and Central Asian business partners — rather than just once in 2015 as previously documented through laptop records and witness sourcing.

Dinner guests included former Moscow first lady Yelena Baturina, who transferred $3.5 million to a Hunter Biden-associated entity in 2014, and Kenes Rakishev, who purchased the then-second son a $142,000 sports car. Another guest was Vadym Pozharsky, board adviser to Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings, which paid Hunter up to $1 million per year beginning in 2014, when his father assumed control of US policy toward Ukraine.

Joe and Hunter Biden posed for a photo with his Kazakhstani guests, which a dinner attendee recalled to The Post was taken after the then-vice president’s participation in the small group meal.

Biden in November 2015 hosted billionaire Carlos Slim and members of the wealthy Mexican Aleman family, whom Hunter Biden and his associate Jeff Cooper courted with energy and technology pitches, at the official vice president’s residence in Washington.

Joe Biden is pictured at the residence with Cooper, Hunter Biden, Carlos Slim, Miguel Alemán Velasco, and his son Miguel Aleman Magnani, the founder of the airline Interjet.

Archer, Hunter’s former associate, also said that Biden had coffee with Chinese executive Jonathan Li in Beijing during a December 2013 visit — in an encounter previously reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Less than two weeks after Joe Biden’s visit, Hunter cofounded Chinese state-backed investment fund BHR Partners with Li as its CEO.

Joe Biden later greeted Li on speakerphone during one of Hunter’s subsequent trips to China, Archer said.

The elder Biden also wrote college recommendation letters for both of Li’s children, laptop records show. 

Hunter held a 10% stake in BHR Partners through at least part of his father’s first year in the White House.

In a second Biden family venture in China, Joe Biden allegedly met twice in 2017 — shortly after leaving office as vice president — with his son and brother’s partners from state-linked CEFC China Energy, according to former Biden family associate Tony Bobulinski.

A May 2017 email from another associate in the CEFC venture, James Gilliar, pencilled in Joe Biden, nicknamed the “big guy,” for a 10% cut and an October 2017 email lists Joe Biden as a participant on a call about CEFC’s attempt to buy US natural gas.

Biden claimed in 2019 while a presidential candidate that he had “never discussed with my son, or my brother … anything having to do with their businesses,” though White House spokespeople this year pivoted to instead claim the president was never “in business” with his relatives.

“President Biden continues to lie to the American people about his interactions related to his family cashing in on the Biden name,” Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said in a statement Wednesday.

“We have produced evidence revealing Joe Biden spoke, dined, took meetings, and had coffee with his son’s foreign business associates,” he added. “We have also produced evidence of how foreign cash landed in Joe Biden’s bank account. We will continue to expose President Biden’s lies and hold him accountable for his corruption.”

Comer recently alleged that Joe Biden accepted foreign money, described as “loan repayments,” from James and Hunter Biden, including $40,000 that he said was “laundered” by James Biden from CEFC funds. The White House and congressional Democrats say that the transfers were legitimate loan repayments, but Republicans note that the original funds that James said he was repaying came from a law firm rather than Joe Biden’s personal account.

In addition to confirmed contacts between Joe Biden and his family’s associates, there are allegations of even more interactions.

Archer testified that Hunter Biden stepped away from a gathering at the Four Seasons in Dubai to “call DC” with Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky and Pozharsky in December 2015.

An FBI informant file released in July by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) says Zlochevsky complained in 2016 that he was “coerced” into paying $10 million in bribes to Joe and Hunter Biden in exchange for the then-vice president’s help in ousting Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Viktor Shokin, who was removed from office in March 2016 after a sustained campaign by Joe Biden. 

The bribery claim has not been proven.

Following Archer’s closed-door deposition, Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), one of Biden’s staunchest defenders in Congress, insisted that his understanding was that the now-president never talked business during those conversations — making the president’s repeated denials Wednesday all the more curious.

“There were niceties. And there was a hello. And [they] talked about the weather or whatever it was,” the Manhattan and Brooklyn lawmaker stated at the time, “but it was never any business.”

Meanwhile, a text message released in June by House Republicans directly mentions Joe Biden as being involved in the shakedown of a Chinese government-linked business.

IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley, who supervised the Hunter Biden tax fraud investigation for more than three years, provided Congress with that message, in which Hunter wrote on July 30, 2017, that he was “sitting here with my father” and warned of consequences if a deal was aborted. 

“I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” Hunter Biden wrote.

“Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight,” the now-53-year-old went on, warning he would “make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction.”

“I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father,” reiterated Hunter, who was at his father’s Wilmington, Del., home on the same day as the message.

Within two weeks of that threat, $5.1 million flowed from CEFC to Biden-linked accounts — on top of more than $1 million transferred earlier in the year, according to a 2020 report by Republican-led Senate committees.