By JOHN HINDERAKER | POWERLINE
Hunter
Biden traveled to Mexico City with his father aboard Air Force Two in February
2016. Paul Morigi/Getty Images
There is a major allegation that Hunter Biden used access to his father to seal previously unknown deals with Mexican businessmen, including Carlos Slim, a billionaire, once briefly considered the richest man in the world, and one of the principal owners of the New York Times. He bailed the Times out when the paper was in financial distress. This observation is correct, and infuriating:
This story has emerged in the latest round of Hunter
Biden emails:
The new emails include references to the use
of Air Force II by Hunter Biden to pursue the deals — a similar pattern
revealed with regard to the China dealings. The emails detail a number of
visits to Mexico, including a February 2016 flight on Air Force II with his father.
On the plane was his business partner Jeff Cooper, who ran Illinois-based
SimmonsCooper.
***
These dealings continued into 2018 as Hunter pushed for deals with Slim. One
text message from July 24, 2018 reads “Spoke to my dad about ‘Slim ask’” and
Cooper responds “Oh that sounds SO F’ING GOOD.”
Will we ever find out what Carlos Slim’s “ask” was?
Sadly, probably not. In the meantime, we know that Joe Biden’s denials that he
had anything to do with his son’s influence peddling are lies.
The new emails contain additional information
directly contradicting President Biden. In addition to earlier pictures from
golf trips and references to his involvement or knowledge, new material refers
to a notable dinner arranged in Washington, D.C.
Hunter arranged for then Vice President Biden
to have dinner on April 16, 2015 with his Ukrainian, Russian and Kazakhstani
business associates. They appropriately chose a private room at Café Milano, a
Georgetown restaurant that brags that it is “Where the world’s most powerful people
go.” After the dinner, Hunter received an email from Vadym Pozharskyi, an
executive with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, to thank him for
introducing him to his father: “Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC
and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time
together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure.”
It is clear that Hunter Biden was selling
access and influence. It appears that Joe Biden was aware of that effort.
I have said it before, but it bears repeating: no one has
ever bribed Hunter Biden. He is a poor, lost, drug-addled soul
who likely would be unemployable but for the fact that his father is a
well-known politician. His role was to act as a bagman, lining up and
collecting bribes for his father in the form of “business deals” with the Red
Chinese and operators like Carlos Slim.
We can imagine a parallel universe in which American
“journalists” are able to put aside their loyalty to the Democratic Party and
look into the question whether we have a president who is hopelessly
compromised by bribes he has taken from foreign powers, starting with the
Chinese Communist Party. But that, sadly, is not the world we live in.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/07/more-evidence-that-joe-biden-is-corrupt.php
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Hunter
Biden used Joe’s VP perks to pursue deal with Carlos Slim
By Miranda Devine | NY Post
PHOTO: Close-up of Carlos Slim with Joe Biden in 2015
Hunter Biden used the perks of the vice presidency — parties, meetings with Joe Biden and flights on Air Force Two — to pursue business deals with Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim while his father was in office, records show.
Hunter’s involvement with Slim, at one time the world’s
richest man, commenced soon after a White House state dinner the magnate
attended in May 2010, along with Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, to honor Mexican
President Felipe Calderon.
The diary on Hunter’s abandoned
laptop shows he and Slim were both guests at a State Department
luncheon during Calderon’s visit, which was hosted by his father and
then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Spanish tenor Placido Domingo also
reportedly attended.
The charmed path that always opens for Hunter when his
father meets a foreign leader or oligarch led him to Mexico on a VIP trip the
following year. Hunter’s diary in May 2011 shows a “tentative tour hosted by
Carlos Slim” of the tycoon’s private “Soumaya Museum,” in Mexico City, which
Slim founded and named after his late wife, Soumaya Domit. Containing priceless
sculptures from pre-Spanish Mesoamerica, it is the most visited museum in the
country. There could be no greater honor offered to Hunter than a private tour
with the billionaire founder.
Hunter also had breakfast with Slim’s friend, Mexican
billionaire Carlos Bremer, at his magnificent villa in the shadow of the Sierra
Madre Oriental mountain range in Monterrey. Bremer, former director of the
country’s stock exchange, had donated millions of dollars to the Clinton
Foundation and sat on the foundation’s board.
Hunter subsequently would hold in-person and video conference meetings with Slim’s sons, Carlos Jr. and Tony Slim, between 2011 and 2015, although the laptop does not indicate what came of the encounters.
Hunter would visit Mexico again in March 2012, April
2013, September 2014 and February 2015. His final recorded flight to Mexico
City was with his father aboard Air Force Two in February 2016. Hunter’s business
partner Jeff Cooper, who ran one of the largest asbestos litigation
firms in the country, Illinois-based SimmonsCooper, was on the flight. Hunter
owned 3 percent of Cooper’s venture capital firm Eudora Global, according to
emails.
Cooper also appears in a Nov. 19, 2015, photograph with
Joe, Hunter, Carlos Slim, another Mexican billionaire, Miguel Alemán Velasco, and his son Miguel Aleman Magnani,
founder of budget airline Interjet, at the vice president’s residence in
Washington, DC.
Earlier that year, Hunter and wife Kathleen had stayed at
Magnani’s Acapulco mansion.
This was also around the time that Carlos Slim became the
largest shareholder in The New York Times.
Hunter’s uncle Jim
Biden, Joe’s younger brother, was keen on leveraging the Slim connection
for profit, emails on the laptop show.
Jim emailed Hunter on May 7, 2015, about a deal that
would involve Slim and a Mexican state-owned oil and gas firm, Petroleos
Mexicanos (Pemex). “Have a very real deal with Pemex (Carlos Slim) need
financing literally for a few days to a week,” he wrote.
“Have the seller (refinery /slims) and buyer major being
delivered from pipeline in (h/ USA) Nothing is simple but this comes very
close. As always the devil is in the detail! Any interest on the long skirts
part?”
Uncle Jim still was hopeful of a Slim windfall in 2017
when he sent Hunter a “short list of foreign friends for next phase.” The list
included Slim, whom Jim described as “very friendly” and “arguably the richest
man in the world.”
Hunter and Cooper were hoping for Slim family money for Cooper’s online gaming company Ocho Gaming and digital wallet firm ePlata, in which Hunter had a 5.25 percent stake through his firm Owasco.
“Just wondering who is the best first major partner
outside [the Aleman family’s airline] Interjet. Obviously [the] Slims provide
that if we could actually sell them on the idea and not have them just take it
and create their own,” Hunter emailed Cooper in February 2015. It was Gabriel
Zinny from Democratic lobbying firm Blue Star Strategies who first suggested
selling Cooper’s gaming interests to Carlos Slim, whose firm Telmex was entering
the online gaming business.
“Below is an article from today’s press about Slim
getting into the business in Mexico,” Zinny wrote to Cooper in April 2012,
forwarding a Reuters piece headlined “Tycoon Slim taps online
gaming market in Mexico.”
“It sounds like a potential good exit strategy for your investment.”
Zinny also was acting for another of Hunter’s wealthy
Latin American associates, Manuel Estrella, owner of construction consortium
Grupo Estrella and listed by Forbes as one of the top 20 richest entrepreneurs
in the Dominican Republic.
In an email in December 2012, Hunter introduced Estrella
to Cooper as “a good friend of mine” and “the perfect partner as you explore
bringing online gaming to the Dominican Republic.”
Two years later, Hunter would arrange for Estrella to
meet Joe Biden. “Hunter I just met your father!” Estrella emailed Hunter on
June 19, 2014. “So exciting.”
Zinny followed up with his own email to Hunter: “Thank
you so much Boss! Just talked to Manuel [Estrella] who was really excited. You
are too generous with your latinos fans!!”
Estrella once had expressed interest in investing in a
“new hotel” in Haiti with Hunter’s company Rosemont Seneca and the
“Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund.”
“He would like to invest in this new hotel, giving
Rosemont Seneca an equity participation and bringing the Fund as a potential
investor,” Zinny wrote Hunter on Oct. 28, 2010. The deal doesn’t appear to have
occurred and communications with Estrella cease in August 2015.
But in 2018, Hunter still was optimistic about making
money from his Slim connections. Despite Joe Biden claiming he’s never
discussed his son’s business with him, there’s a text message from July 24,
2018, on the laptop:
“Spoke to my dad about ‘Slim ask,’ ” Hunter wrote Cooper
after a visit from his father in Los Angeles. “Oh that sounds SO F’ING GOOD”
replied Cooper.
Miranda Devine’s book, “Laptop from Hell: Hunter Biden, Big Tech, and the Dirty Secrets
the President Tried to Hide,” is out in September.
https://nypost.com/2021/07/01/hunter-biden-used-joes-vp-perks-to-pursue-deal-with-carlos-slim/