Miranda Devine: Joe Biden looking for 10 per cent cut from deal with Chinese megacompany

In her new book Miranda Devine reconstructs the Biden family’s quest for cash using files left on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop.

Yesterday, in the first extract from Miranda Devine’s book, she detailed how Hunter Biden and uncle Jim Biden entered into a deal with Chinese government-linked energy conglomerate CFEC, and contacted a businessman named Tony Bobulinski to run the enterprise. Here, in the second excerpt, Bobulinski meets “the big guy” — Joe Biden himself.

Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. Picture: Getty Images

HOTEL LOBBY CHAT

Hunter Biden and his Uncle Jim were already waiting for Tony Bobulinski in the lobby bar of the Beverly Hilton when he arrived at 10 p.m. on May 2, 2017.

The Bidens had chosen a discreet couch behind a thick marble column where they could see everyone who walked in the front entrance. Joe Biden, who had left the vice president’s office a little three months before, was flying into Los Angeles to speak at the prestigious Milken Institute Global Conference and would be joining them at the bar within the hour.

For Bobulinski, 48, a third-generation Navy veteran and Democrat donor, it would be his first meeting with Joe Biden, and he was conscious that he was being vetted for a trusted role orchestrating the Biden family’s existing joint venture with Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC.

Hunter Biden’s associate Tony Bobulinski was being vetted to help the Biden family in their partnership with a Chinese energy company. Picture: AFP

“Dad not in now until 11,” Hunter wrote in a WhatsApp message. “Let’s me [you] and Jim meet at 10 at Beverly Hilton where he’s staying.”

When Bobulinski arrived at the bar, Uncle Jim, seven years younger than his brother and more heavyset but still a dead ringer for Joe, greeted him like an old friend, although it was the first time they’d met.

At that hour the only other person in the bar was casino operator Steve Wynn, sitting with a woman on the other side of the room. Hunter and Bobulinski drank water while Jim ordered a club sandwich with fries and explained that the meeting with Joe was strictly “high level.”

“We will not go into any detail about the business,” said Hunter. “I just want my dad to be comfortable with you.”

Laptop from Hell, by Miranda Devine

’I TRUST YOU’, BIDEN TELLS BOBULINSKI

At 10:38 p.m., Joe arrived through the hotel’s front entrance with his Secret Service entourage, and Hunter jumped up to intercept him. Five minutes later he brought his father to the table.

Bobulinski stood up to shake Joe’s hand.

“This is Tony, Dad,” said Hunter, “the individual I told you about that’s helping us with the business that we’re working on with the Chinese.”

Joe began by talking about the Biden family, their tragedies, and his political career. Bobulinski described his background as captain of the Penn State wrestling team and briefly outlined an impressive résumé, including as a nuclear engineer and instructor in the Navy’s elite Nuclear Power Training Command with a high-level security clearance.

“Thank you for your service,” Joe said. “Thank you for helping my son.”

Jim and Hunter told Joe that Bobulinski had been “working hard” on the Chinese deal and Joe said: “My son and my brother trust you emphatically, so I trust you.”

Bobulinski had passed the test. It was a crucial meeting, because for the first time an outsider would see the extent to which Joe was involved in Hunter and Jim’s international business.

Hunter Biden and his widowed sister in law turned lover Hallie Biden.

Hunter Biden with an unnamed female

Joe was the final decision-maker. Nothing important was done without his agreement.

The conversation wrapped up within 45 minutes.

Joe was tired, but he invited Bobulinski to meet him again at 8:30 a.m. the next day in the hotel ballroom to hear him speak at the Milken confab of chief executives, wealthy investors, and fund managers.

As soon as he got home, Bobulinski messaged Jim Biden on WhatsApp at 11.40 p.m.: “Great to meet u and spend some time together, please thank Joe for his time was great to talk thx.”

The next morning, Bobulinski went back to the Beverly Hilton and sat at the head table listening to Joe talk on stage with L.A. billionaire and notorious insider trader Michael Milken.

Backstage afterwards, Joe asked: “What did you think of my speech?” They walked outside together to his waiting car and shook hands.

“Keep an eye on my son and brother and look out for my family,” Joe told him.

’PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY’

Bobulinski then headed across Santa Monica Boulevard to the Peninsula Hotel to meet Jim, who was sitting alone in a blue and white cabana by the rooftop pool on a glorious sunny day.

For two hours he was regaled with Biden family folklore, going back to Joe’s first Senate election in Delaware in 1972, when Jim, then 23, dabbling in the nightclub business after dropping out of the University of Delaware, became his brother’s chief fundraiser. Jim filled him in on the efforts he and Hunter had made for CEFC the past two years, leveraging Joe’s name to advance the CCP’s Belt and Road agenda around the world.

As Jim talked, Bobulinski marveled at the political risk to Joe’s career if his family’s flagrant influence peddling during his vice presidency came to light.

“How are you guys getting away with this?” he finally asked. “Aren’t you concerned that you’re going to put your brother’s [2020] presidential campaign at risk? You know, the Chinese, the stuff that you guys have been doing already in 2015 and 2016, around the world?”

Jim chuckled and looked knowingly at Bobulinski.

“Plausible deniability,” he said, using a term of art coined by the CIA during the Kennedy administration to describe the practice of keeping the president uninformed about illegal or unsavory activity so he can plausibly deny he knows anything if it becomes public knowledge.

Bobulinski later told the New York Post that Joe Biden’s claim that he never talked to Hunter Biden about business is false.

Hunter Biden takes a selfie of his fresh back tattoo.

Bobulinski understood Jim meant that Joe knew what his family was doing in his name but was insulated from the dirty details. It was why Jim and Hunter had instructed Bobulinski the previous night to keep the business talk with Joe at a vague “high level.”

Occasionally they would let their guard down, but the family was “paranoid” about keeping Joe’s involvement quiet, Bobulinski would be told.

He soon learned to decode the euphemisms related to Joe, which made him a dangerous foe three years later when he became so disgusted that he blew the whistle on the shady enterprise.

“I’ve seen Vice President Biden saying he never talked to Hunter about his business,” Bobulinski would say in a bombshell statement to the New York Post’s Michael Goodwin on October 22, 2020, a few days after the paper began publishing material from Hunter’s laptop.

“I’ve seen first- hand that that’s not true, because it wasn’t just Hunter’s business. They said they were putting the Biden family name and its legacy on the line . . .

“I don’t have a political ax to grind; I just saw behind the Biden curtain, and I grew concerned with what I saw. The Biden family aggressively leveraged the Biden family name to make millions of dollars from foreign entities even though some were from communist-controlled China.”

THE BIG GUY’S CUT

Less than two weeks after meeting Joe Biden, Bobulinski incorporates SinoHawk Holdings LLC, on May 15, 2017, having decided against Hunter’s suggestion they call it CEFC America. It will be a global investment firm seeded with $10 million of Chinese money that will buy projects in the US and around the world “in global and/or domestic infrastructure, energy, financial services and other strategic sectors,” says the contract he has drawn up.

SinoHawk would be 50 percent owned by Ye Jianming, chairman of CEFC, through a Delaware-incorporated CEFC entity, Hudson West IV LLC. The other 50 percent would be owned by Oneida Holdings LLC, another Delaware firm set up by Bobulinski.

Oneida would be split according to an email sent by James Gilliar to the group on May 13, 2017, laying out the distribution of shares.

“The equity will be distributed as follows,” wrote Gilliar, listing the shares in percentages.

“20 H [Hunter]

“20 RW [Walker]

“20 JG [Gilliar] “20 TB [Bobulinski] “10 Jim [Biden] “10 held by H for the big guy.”

Joe Biden was lining up a 10 per cent cut from the deal. Picture: AFP

Three years later, Bobulinski will tell the world that “there is no question” that the “big guy” is Joe Biden.

“Hunter Biden called his dad ‘the Big Guy’ or ‘my Chairman,’ and frequently referenced asking him for his sign-off or advice on various potential deals that we were discussing.”

Joe was called “the big guy” in other emails on Hunter’s laptop or in WhatsApp messages on Bobulinski’s phones.

Gilliar warned Bobulinski, in a WhatsApp message on May 20, about the need for discretion about Joe’s role: “Don’t mention Joe being involved, it’s only when u are face to face, I know u know that but they are paranoid.”

Bobulinski, already frustrated by Hunter’s demands, replied: “OK they should be paranoid about things.”

Excerpted with permission from “Laptop from Hell: Hunter Biden, Big Tech, and the Dirty Secrets the President Tried to Hide” (Post Hill Press), out Tuesday.