Kevin Rudd name-dropped by Hunter Biden’s jailed associate
Kevin Rudd’s name was used in a letter to the US Ambassador to China to entice him to a banquet linked to a now-jailed friend of Hunter Biden.
NSW
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The jailed business partner of presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son Hunter claimed ex-pm Kevin Rudd was coming to one of their company’s banquets in order to celebrate a controversial Chinese takeover deal.
But Mr Rudd denies he was involved in the event. He says he wasn’t even in China that week and has “no knowledge or record of any such event”.
New emails have surfaced from fraudster Devon Archer touting the former Labor leader’s name in a bid to snare important guests to a Chinese celebration dinner on October 28, 2015, hosted by Hunter Biden’s firm BHR Partners.
The company was also part-owned by Chinese Communist Party state firms, and had just bought out a militarily-sensitive US automaker.
“It would be a great honour if you could attend the evening banquet as our special guest,” Devon Archer wrote to US ambassador Max Baucus, signing the letter as Vice-Chairman.
“As well as our partners and investors there will be a number of foreign dignitaries such as Kevin Rudd and the Vice President of the Bank of China at the event.”
But a spokesman for Mr Rudd, who has been busy dealing with the fallout over the Jeffrey Epstein donations to his peace think-tank, said “his diary shows he was in London and Abu Dhabi that entire week”.
“Mr Rudd is not aware of this event and has no record of it,” he said.
Mr Rudd gave a speech at the Imperial Springs forum at Guangzhou on October 16-17 and later attended a Beijing conference with President Xi Jingping on November 3.
US media is reporting the invite was contained in a string of 26,000 emails released by jailed Biden associate Bevan Cooney – a separate bundle to the Hunter Biden laptop emails.
In one email dated September 15, 2015, Cooney and Archer discuss the Chinese deal, codenamed Operation Hanson, under the heading “proof of concept again”.
Cooney then writes to Archer saying the $600 million purchase of Henniges was “great”. “Let’s get a letter out to Ambassador Baucus ASAP Archie”, he says.
The invite to Mr Baucus then says “strategic partners … will be in attendance, as will our investors, including the Bank of China and China Development Bank”.
Asked if he was concerned his name was used to approach the US ambassador, Mr Rudd’s spokesman said: “It’s hard to say given he knows nothing about this purported event or the company involved.”
The deal was criticised by some senators at the time because auto-parts maker Henniges had state-of-the-art “anti-vibration technologies”, categorised as “dual-use” because of their military applications and Chinese military aircraft-maker AVIC was also part of the deal, despite being previously black-listed.
“Mr Rudd cannot offer comment on a financial transaction about which he has no knowledge or records,” Mr Rudd‘s spokesman said.
“It is quite plain that the Murdoch media is trying to establish guilt-by-association.“
The spokesman provided a long list of people Mr Rudd has met over the past five years, including presidents.
The New York Post broke news of the cash-for-influence scandal last month surrounding the Biden family, after emails were discovered in Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop.
Separately, another tranche of 26,000 emails by a jailed associate of Hunter Biden, Bevan Cooney were released to New York Times best-selling investigative author Peter Schweizer.
Mr Rudd’s spokesman questioned the “profound ethical questions” for the media involved in any dealings with former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who helped expose the emails on the abandoned laptop.
Mr Rudd is the president of the New York-based Asia Society Policy Institute.
