Politics
Joe Biden poses with Hunter's Chinese business associates in newly surfaced photos: 'Incredibly damning'
President Biden is seen in newly uncovered photos meeting with Hunter Biden’s Chinese business associates in China while he served as vice president, bringing further scrutiny to his claim he “never” discussed business with his son.
The photos, obtained by conservative-leaning America First Legal through litigation against the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), appear to show then-Vice President Biden introducing his son to Chinese President Xi Jinping and then-Vice President Li Yuanchao. Other photos show Joe Biden posing with Hunter’s business associates from BHR Partners, including Jonathan Li and Ming Xue.
“These images shed light on the connections between then-Vice President Biden, Hunter and his Chinese business associates, and Chinese government officials including President Xi Jinping,” America First Legal said in a press release this week. “Lawyers and representatives for President Biden and President Obama delayed NARA’s release of these photographs, as they did with other records, until after Election Day.”
“These photos corroborate the House Oversight Committee’s investigative findings that Hunter Biden arranged for his father to meet with Jonathan Li and other BHR executives during the 2013 China trip, where ‘Mr. Li sought— and received — access to Vice President Biden’s political power, including, for example, preferential access to then-U.S. Ambassador to China Max Baucus … a condition of Hunter Biden and his associates participating in the BHR deal,’” America First Legal wrote.
HUNTER BIDEN: A LOOK AT HOW THE SAGA SPANNING OVER SIX YEARS UNFOLDED
Hunter Biden and Joe Biden with Ming Xue, Jonathan Li and Rock Shi (America First Legal)
America First Legal also wrote that, according to the committee’s investigation, “the Biden Family benefited from their business dealings with BHR.”
Hunter Biden was asked earlier this year by the House Oversight Committee about his meetings while traveling to Asia with his father.
“When we returned from an event to the hotel, there was a rope line, and Jonathan Li was in the lobby of the hotel where I was going to meet him for coffee,” Hunter Biden said at the time. “In that line, I introduced my dad to Jonathan Li and a friend of his, and they shook hands and I believe probably took a photograph. And then my father went up to his room, and I went to have coffee with Jonathan Li.”
Hunter Biden added that he didn’t tell his father “anything” about who Li was.
Joe Biden has repeatedly denied any role in his son’s businesses.
HUNTER BIDEN WAS PAID $100K THROUGH JOINT VENTURE WITH CHINESE ENERGY FIRM, EX-ASSOCIATE TESTIFIED
Vice President Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, China President Xi and former U.S. China Ambassador Max Baucus (America First Legal)
“I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” Joe Biden said on the presidential campaign trail in 2019.
But emails sent to and from Hunter Biden have cast doubt on that, including a 2017 email obtained by Fox News that shows Hunter requesting keys for Joe and Jill Biden, along with his uncle, Jim Biden, for space he planned to share with an “emissary” to the chairman of a now-bankrupt Chinese energy company.
In another 2017 email also obtained by Fox News, Biden wrote to the same Chinese energy company’s chairman extending “best wishes from the entire Biden family,” and urging the chairman to “quickly” send a $10 million wire to “properly fund and operate” the Biden joint venture with the company.
JOE BIDEN SAYS HUNTER HAS DONE ‘NOTHING WRONG.’ REALLY? LET’S COUNT THE WAYS
Hunter Biden and Joe Biden photo from America First Legal (America First Legal)
Devon Archer, a former business partner and longtime friend of Hunter Biden, sat for hours before the House Oversight Committee in a closed-door hearing last year and contradicted the president’s claim, saying Hunter put his father on speakerphone while meeting with business partners at least 20 times.
Archer described how Joe Biden was put on the phone to sell “the brand.”
The photos drew strong criticism on social media in light of President Biden’s frequent claims he never discussed business with his son.
“Astonishing,” Red State writer Bonchie posted on X.
“These photos are incredibly damning and speak volumes,” author and journalist Peter Schweizer posted on X.
“It is such a disgrace that only through litigation, and only at the conclusion of the Biden administration is its corruption by ties to the Chinese Communist Party fully coming into focus,” Real Clear Politics editor Benjamin Weingarten posted on X.
“The Biden Crime Family Christmas card just dropped,” GOP Rep. Eric Burlison posted on X.
“China has the Bidens in its back pocket,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton posted on X.
Hunter Biden, left, son of President Biden, arrives with attorney Abbe Lowell at the O’Neill House Office Building for a closed-door deposition in a Republican-led investigation into the Biden family on Capitol Hill in Washington Feb. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
The newly unearthed photos of the Bidens meeting with Hunter’s Chinese business associates renews scrutiny of an email exchange previously reported by Fox News Digital. The 2014 email exchange reveals Hunter Biden once said he would be “happy” to introduce his business associates to a top Chinese Communist Party official to discuss potential investments after that official allegedly sat at Hunter’s table during a 2013 dinner in Beijing to welcome his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden.
Hunter’s 2014 email exchange with James Bulger referred to the same China trip referenced in the America First Legal press release.
Bulger, who goes by “Jimmy,” served as the chairman of Boston-based Thornton Group LLC, a firm that joined forces with Hunter’s now-defunct Rosemont Seneca to launch its joint venture with Chinese investment firm Bohai Capital to create BHR Partners shortly after the Bidens traveled to China. BHR Partners is controlled by Bank of China Limited.
President Biden and Hunter Biden arrive in Syracuse, N.Y. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)
In the 2014 email, Bulger asked Hunter to introduce BHR CEO Jonathan Li and Andy Lu, who was a BHR committee member, to “Mr. Tung,” which refers to C.H. Tung, a former governor of Hong Kong and billionaire who served as vice chairman of the CCP-linked Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, to discuss “BHR investment targets” and “fundraising.”
The email alleged Hunter sat next to Tung at the December 2013 dinner welcoming Vice President Joe Biden to Beijing. Fox News Digital previously reached out to the White House multiple times requesting the seating chart for the Beijing dinner, specifically Hunter’s table, but it did not respond.
“It is my understanding that during the trip to Beijing that you made with your father, President Xi hosted a welcome dinner,” Bulger wrote. “[A]t that dinner, you were seated right next to Mr Tung, therefore J and Andy believe it would be very helpful if you could please send a brief email to Mr Tung laying out that you are a partner and Board Member of BHR and that You would be grateful to Mr Tung if he could meet your local partners to discuss the Fund.
“Please let me know if you can introduce these two to Mr Tung by email it is very important to our BHR intiative [sic] at this moment.”
Hunter responded that he was “happy” to fulfill the request but said he couldn’t recall the names of the gentlemen who sat next to him at the dinner.
It appears that the Beijing “welcome dinner” hosted by President Xi that Bulger was referencing in his initial email occurred during the evening of Dec. 4, 2013, after then-Chinese Vice President Li Yuanchao met with Joe Biden earlier in the day to discuss strengthening U.S.-China relations.
President Biden pardoned his son earlier this month for any crimes potentially committed dating back to 2014.
Hunter Biden flashes a big smile as he leaves an Arby’s in Santa Barbara Dec. 4, 2024. This was the first time the son of President Biden had been photographed since being pardoned by his father. (The Image Direct for Fox News Digital)
“Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter,” Biden wrote in a statement at the time. “From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted.
“There has been an effort to break Hunter — who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution,” the 82-year-old father wrote. “In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me — and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”
Fox News Digital has previously reached out to the White House about why the pardon was so broad but did not receive a response.
“Even while President Biden has pardoned his son, Hunter, for anything and everything ‘he has committed or may have committed or taken part in’ going all the way back to the year 2014, more evidence comes out each day showing how his family leveraged Joe Biden’s even longer career in public office for private gain,” America First Legal Counsel Michael Ding said in a statement.
“America First Legal will not stop fighting to uncover the full story of the Biden Family’s corruption.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the White House, Hunter Biden’s legal team and the Chinese businessmen in the photos but did not receive a comment.
Fox News Digital’s Jessica Chasmar Brooke Singman, and Tyler Olson contributed to this report
The United States and Iran on Friday were taking steps to resume peace talks, as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the U.S. blockade of Iranian ships and ports would continue for “as long as it takes” to get Tehran to agree to a deal.
Steve Witkoff, a U.S. special envoy, and Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, planned to travel to Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, on Saturday for negotiations, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said on Friday.
“Steve and Jared will be heading to Pakistan tomorrow to hear the Iranians out,” Ms. Leavitt told reporters outside the White House. “We hope progress will be made, and we hope that positive developments will come from this meeting.”
Mr. Trump, Vice President JD Vance, who has been leading the talks with the Iranians, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio “will be waiting here in the United States for updates,” Ms. Leavitt added.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, arrived in Islamabad on Friday, Iranian state media reported. He was carrying a written response to a U.S. proposal for a peace deal, according to two senior Iranian officials familiar with his plans.
Earlier, the Iranian officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy, said Mr. Araghchi had been expected to meet with Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner this weekend. But later, a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, Esmail Baghaei, said in a post on X that no meeting was planned between Iran and the United States in Pakistan and that Iran would convey its position through Pakistani officials.
While Iran has publicly rejected peace talks during the U.S. naval blockade of its ports, the two Iranian officials said that Tehran has been exchanging messages through Pakistan and engaging in diplomacy to resume talks. The Trump administration has said the military cordon is aimed at crushing the Iranian economy and pressuring Tehran to make a deal.
Mr. Hegseth said on Friday that while the naval blockade would continue, the U.S. military remained poised to attack Iran again on Mr. Trump’s orders.
“Iran knows that they still have an open window to choose wisely at the negotiating table,” Mr. Hegseth told reporters at the Pentagon.
Many sticking points remain, including the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz; the fate of Iran’s highly enriched uranium; and Tehran’s demand that about $27 billion in frozen assets held abroad be released.
The United States and Iran agreed to a cease-fire more than two weeks ago. Still, tensions have remained high in and around the strait, a crucial conduit for Persian Gulf crude oil and natural gas. On Tuesday, Mr. Trump said he was extending the cease-fire indefinitely. But both Iran and the United States have continued to seize vessels they said have violated their restrictions on shipping in the waterway.
On Friday, the U.S. Treasury Department rolled out a blitz of new sanctions targeting 40 shipping firms and vessels it said were part of Iran’s “shadow fleet” of oil tankers. It also imposed sanctions on a China-based independent refinery, Hengli, which the Treasury identified as one of Iran’s largest customers for crude oil and other petroleum products.
The United States and Iran moved to resume talks as clashes between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia, intensified in Lebanon on Friday, straining a separate cease-fire that was also extended by the White House.
Mr. Trump announced a three-week extension of the truce in Lebanon on Thursday, after hosting Israeli and Lebanese diplomats at the White House. Hezbollah, which is not part of the negotiations, has signaled it intends to abide by the truce if Israel does the same.
Strikes between Israel and Hezbollah have plummeted since an initial cease-fire was announced last week. But both sides have continued to exchange fire, raising fears that the truce could collapse into an all-out war.
“Cease-fire? What cease-fire while drones are still hovering above us?” said Fatima al-Masri, 49, who was in the southern Lebanese town of Qana on Friday. She was visiting the grave of her husband, an emergency worker, who had been killed in the conflict.
“What cease-fire while we are still losing our men and our loved ones?” she said, adding, “We want this war to be over.”
The current conflict that began last month has killed about 2,500 people in Lebanon, the country’s health ministry said, as well as two civilians and 15 soldiers in Israel, officials said.
The fighting began last month, when Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel in support of Iran, setting off a large-scale Israeli bombing campaign and ground invasion of southern Lebanon. Israeli forces are still deployed in a broad section of the country’s south, which Israeli officials have said they plan to occupy indefinitely.
Israel appeared to escalate its operations on Friday, issuing evacuation warnings for the southern Lebanese town of Deir Aames before launching airstrikes hours later. The town lies beyond the six-mile-deep “forward defense line” that Israel said it would control amid the cease-fire, suggesting that Israel’s strikes were widening.
The Israeli military said in a statement that Hezbollah had launched rockets from the town a day earlier toward northern Israel. Hezbollah also said it had again fired drones at Israeli troops in southern Lebanon on Friday.
Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, has pledged to continue demolishing border towns and villages amid the cease-fire. Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese remain displaced from the region, many with little idea if or when they can return.
During the talks at the White House on Thursday, Lebanon called for an end to those demolitions, according to a senior Lebanese official briefed on the negotiations who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.
Hezbollah, for its part, expressed contempt for the state of the cease-fire on Friday, pointing to the continued Israeli military operations and reiterating its pledges to respond with force.
Mohamad Raad, Hezbollah’s leader in the Lebanese Parliament, said in a statement that the truce was “not a cease-fire at all,” and he urged the Lebanese government to withdraw from direct negotiations with Israel.
“The authorities should feel ashamed before their people,” Mr. Raad said, raising already simmering tensions between the Lebanese government and Hezbollah, a group it does not control.
Israel’s strikes this week killed Amal Khalil, a reporter for the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, and wounded another person in southern Lebanon, further rattling the tenuous truce.
The cease-fire agreement, released last week by the State Department, said that Israel would cease “offensive military operations” in Lebanon but “preserve its right to take all necessary measures in self-defense, at any time, against planned, imminent or ongoing attacks.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel accused Hezbollah in a recorded video statement on Friday of moving to “sabotage” peace efforts between Israel and Lebanon, signaling the military had no intention to cease attacks against the group.
“We have maintained full freedom of action against any threat, including emerging threats,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “We attacked yesterday, we attacked today. We are determined to restore security to the residents of the north.”
Reporting was contributed by Helene Cooper, Alan Rappeport, Pranav Baskar, Sarah Chaayto, John Ismay, Michael Levenson and Abdi Latif Dahir.
Politics
Florida Dem filed for re-election days before resignation as House Ethics Committee ramped up pressure
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Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick is still registered to run for re-election despite having resigned from office amid congressional and federal probes for allegedly mishandling disaster relief funding for personal gain.
On April 17, Cherfilus-McCormick submitted a notice of her candidacy to the Florida Department of State as a Democrat just a week before officially stepping down from office.
She resigned on Tuesday.
The filing raises questions about whether Cherfilus-McCormick believes she can still pursue political office despite facing intense scrutiny at the moment.
NANCY MACE CALLS ON CONGRESS TO RELEASE SEXUAL HARASSMENT RECORDS, WANTS AN ‘AVALANCHE OF RESIGNATIONS’
Former Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Fla., speaks after being sworn in during a ceremony in the Broward County Commission chambers in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on Jan. 27, 2025. (Joe Cavaretta/South Florida Sun Sentinel/Tribune News Service)
Her office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Cherfilus-McCormick’s decision to resign from office came right before the House Ethics Committee was scheduled to recommend she be punished for misusing disaster relief funding that she allegedly funneled through several companies into her campaign coffers.
The committee found that she had committed 18 campaign finance violations, five counts of false financial disclosures, three counts of misusing official funds and one count of lack of candor.
Cherfilus-McCormick maintained her innocence but announced that she would defend herself outside of her time in office.
Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Fla. (Carline Jean/South Florida Sun Sentinel/Tribune News Service)
“This was not a fair process. The Ethics Committee refused my new attorney’s reasonable request for time to prepare my defense. I simply cannot stand by and allow my due process rights to be trampled on, and my good name to be tarnished,” Cherfilus-McCormick said in a press release.
“Rather than play these political games, I choose to step away so that I can devote my time to fighting for my neighbors in Florida’s 20th district. I hereby resign from the 119th Congress, effective immediately.”
While Cherfilus-McCormick’s departure from Congress halted the Ethics Committee’s authority over her, she also faces federal charges.
FEDERAL CHARGES FILED AGAINST DEM CONGRESSWOMAN FOLLOWING CONFRONTATION AT ICE FACILITY
Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Fla., leaves the U.S. Capitol after the last votes of the week on March 27, 2025. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images)
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She was indicted by a Miami grand jury in November for allegedly stealing $5 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has not yet announced a date for a special election to fill her vacant seat.
SACRAMENTO — A ballot measure that would require Californians to show identification every time they vote in person, or use a special pin number when submitting mail-in ballots, has qualified for the November ballot, elections officials announced Friday.
The measure also would require election officials to verify registered voters are U.S. citizens, aligning with a Republican-led push for new restrictions on voters in the wake of President Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, and that undocumented immigrants are swaying elections by voting illegally.
Republican Assemblymember Carl DeMaio from San Diego has been pushing the measure for several years, while Trump and Republicans also are seeking a similar initiative at the federal level.
If passed, the California ballot measure would require a voter to present government-issued identification, such as a state driver’s license, every time they vote. Voters mailing ballots would be required to write a four-digit number, essentially a pin number, on their ballots matching the one generated when they registered to vote.
The pin would come from ID such as a driver’s license, or could be generated from the county. The vast majority of Californians mail in their ballots in elections.
Under the measure, election officials also must ensure that registered voters are U.S. citizens by using information from government records, which could include information in the federal Social Security Administration database, and maintain accurate voter registration lists.
DeMaio said the measure is different than a federal proposal, known as the SAVE Act, which stalled out in the U.S. Senate this week.
DeMaio said the state ballot measure “does not do away with mail in ballots, because voters of all political backgrounds like the convenience of mail in ballots. So we want to keep that convenience.”
The ballot measure needs a simple majority to pass.
Under current law, Californians are not required to show or provide identification when casting a ballot in person or by mail. They are required to provide identification when registering to vote, and must swear under penalty of perjury, a felony, that they are eligible to vote and a U.S. citizen.
Jenny Farrell, executive director of the League of Women Voters of California, told The Times that her group is committed to fighting the measure, arguing it would make it harder for people in the state to vote.
She said that people may forget to use a pin on their mail-in ballot, leading to their vote being disqualified. Similar changes in Texas, she said, led to a rise in rejected ballots due to technical errors.
“It doesn’t really weed out illegal voting,” which doesn’t actually exist, she said, “but it does cause more ballots to be incorrectly flagged and ultimately rejected.”
ACLU of Northern and Southern California, Common Cause, Disability Rights California also oppose the measure.
DeMaio filed for the ballot initiative in 2021 and 2023, but did not move forward with the signature collection process in order to fine-tune the ballot language.
He said his ballot measure wasn’t focused primarily about making sure that undocumented people don’t vote.
“That’s one element of concern that we’ve heard from some groups, but it really is making sure that, No. 1, we properly maintain our voter rolls,” he said.
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