On December 4, 2013, Joe and Hunter Biden arrived in Beijing, China aboard Air Force Two. What followed from this trip would have wide-ranging national security implications and affect geopolitics across the West, potentially for generations to come.
It had been a well-known fact for decades that Joe Biden, the credit card senator from Delaware, was for sale. Now the Chinese Communist Party wanted to make him, and his son Hunter, on-the-payroll agents of China’s political agenda. After deals were inked, the Bidens and their crew were poised to reap hundreds of millions of dollars in exchange for soft lobbying services (ie: undisclosed and unregistered) and endorsed access to the entire West’s developed economic market and its most powerful political structures. This was tantamount to selling out the American people, and by virtue of aiding China on its economically imperial path to global hegemony, the rest of the developed Western world as well.
By indirectly selling his influence through his son to the murderous Chinese Communist Party, Joe Biden was enabling the rise of an actor capable of unleashing horrific outcomes for America and her allies.
Hunter Biden, the ne’er do well son of the VP, with well-documented issues making headlines all too often, was the perfect useful idiot. Addicted to drugs, even having been booted from the military for cocaine usage, sexually promiscuous, and connected all over D.C. thanks to his father’s half a century political career, he was the classic bagman for an operation such as this one. With recently-released emails and text messages from his now famous laptop, it appears Hunter gave his father ‘50%’. By all indications, and thanks to Tony Bobulinski’s first person testimony to a national audience, Joe was fine with the ChiComs using his son so ‘the big guy’ could bring home the bacon for himself and his clan; siblings, spouses, and the next generations. Meanwhile, Hunter degenerated into a life of debauchery and drug abuse, that could eventually bring down the Democratic candidate for the President of the United States.
The Bidens walked away from Beijing after this 2013 trip as 30% owners of a $1.5 billion investment fund. They offered nothing to the Chinese by way of consideration but their services as lobbyists and door openers.
Bohai Harvest RST (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund Management Co., Ltd. (BHR) was not a legitimate investment company in the classical sense, set up to make financial return on investment through legal means. The firm was set up as a tool for the CCPs global economic imperial ambitions, using the Biden name, and others in their orbit, to market Chinese mercantile domination. The return on investment was not financial, it was political, and Joe Biden was the delivery mechanism to see these ambitions reached.
BHR was created and funded by two Chinese investment funds, owned by the Bank of China (Bohai Capital and Harvest Global). As described in their marketing presentation: “BHR is held in high regard by Chinese government bodies and SOEs at all levels.” During the infamous 2013 visit to Beijing, the Biden’s new firm in which Hunter was a partner, Rosemont Seneca Thornton (RST) signed the deal to walk away with an approximate 30% ownership position of the company after the $1.5 billion capital injection into BHR by their Chinese partners.
RST was formed from a joint venture between Rosemont Seneca Partners and Thornton, an investment advisory firm headed by James Bulger, of the famous Boston family (son of William “Billy Bulger, the longest serving President of the Massachusetts Senate and the nephew of James “Whitey” Bulger, the infamous mobster who ran the Winter Hill Gang). Rosemont Seneca was formed in 2009 as a private equity and advisory firm that was co-founded by Hunter Biden and Christopher Heinz, of the Heinz ketchup fortune and step-son to long time Democratic senator and later Secretary of State John Kerry, along with their friend Devon Archer, Chris Heinz’s college roommate at Yale. The original anchor investor in Rosemont Seneca (which at one point claimed $2.4bn in assets under management) was Rosemont Capital, a Heinz family office alternative investment fund, named after Rosemont – the Heinz family estate outside Pittsburgh. During the most vibrant years of this partnership’s international investment and “consulting” activity, it is important to note that Joe Biden was acting Vice President and John Kerry was acting Secretary of State. It was not coincidental that Rosemont Seneca’s headquarters was in Washington, D.C. as opposed to New York where most of its competitors maintained their offices given the investment professional labor pool in and around Wall Street.
By late 2013, Chris Heinz was beginning to get nervous about the international activity of the Rosemont Seneca partnership and the theaters in which they were engaging their business activity (places such as Ukraine, where Heinz was particularly cautious given brewing instability and then ties to Putin, as well as Russia, Kazakhstan, and China). According to one email between Archer and another outside partner- Jason Galanis, they discuss elevating the Biden name and reducing the presence in their marketing materials of Heinz (and by extension, the marketing of their ties to Secretary of State Kerry).
They called this pivot “Operation Ketchup” where Heinz would be “watered down” and “Hunts only from now on.” As Archer said, “Chris is much more risk averse. Hunter will work if we need him too (sic) as well.” Five days later the emails between them (Archer to Galanis) gave us this admission “We get the Biden lift and stay out of Heinz panties…I don’t want to upset Hunter by not representing him and I don’t want to piss off Heinz by using his name unauthorized. (Heinz wiped from all bios too, correct?)”
In 2015 Heinz divorced himself in full from all Rosemont Seneca activity.
According to a first-hand account from another business partner, Bevan Cooney, who while in prison in September 2020, flipped and shared his emails with investigative reporter Matthew Tyrmand (co-author of this article), the infamous BHR deal was inked with Ambassador Max Baucus present in his office at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. Baucus, was the former six term democratic senator of Montana and Obama’s appointee to the head diplomatic post in China, and had longstanding relationships with Biden Sr. and Kerry from years all serving alongside each other in the Senate. Baucus was also connected to Devon Archer as Archer was a fellow Montanan.
BHR’s initial deal, and the impetus behind its formation, at least optically, was a unique project whereas the firm would co-invest in an equity deal in a wholly owned subsidiary of Sinopec, the $60bn+ Chinese state owned energy and chemical company, and then market shares in the West via Sinopec Marketing, an equity holding company of the giant energy conglomerate focused on the consumer retail segment of its many business lines (gas stations and convenience stores). The terms were that RST would receive 1.68% ownership in the new spun-out company making it the 7th largest outside investor in this state-owned Chinese communist enterprise (the government maintained a 70% stake). BHR was investing $1.7bn.
BHR then proceeded to execute a global road show, marketing the Biden name and connections across Western developed capital markets to aid Sinopec and the Chinese business people connected to the CCP at BHR in acquiring a strategic network, Western capital sources and access, raw materials, and overseas influence. Of course, given the massive Chinese economy and national reserves from running a cash and trading surplus for so many years, they didn’t really need the capital. The Bank of China alone has access to trillions of dollars and the capital on the balance sheets of the other SOE’s would and could provide untold amounts of other capital to be sourced if need be.
In the marketing materials for the deal, “the injection of private and social capital” is cited as a primary reason for raising this cash equity capital. Effectively this was political capital being sought in this venture. What they communicated though (from the Sinopec Marketing presentation) was an interest in “bring(ing) about improvements in corporate governance, operational efficiency, and effective management incentives.”
But, the political capital they were building was aimed at Western political power centers in which to lobby for their long term agenda and access to strategic acquisition opportunities that they might make to further their economically imperialist goals. The strategic foreign relationships that could be built with the help of the Bidens, and others from their global network (see slide below) could be exploited down the road.
Who else was important to highlight on their “Global Network” marketing slide besides Hunter Biden as a proxy for Lunch Bucket Joe? Of course Hunter (and previously Chris Heinz’s) partner Devon Archer, who more and more appears to have been the ringleader in the business planning and deal execution (and the mastermind of “Operation Ketchup”- see above) throughout the correspondences between the whole gang. Archer bills himself as a “Senior Advisor to John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign” and an “Independent director of Kazakhstan’s Sovereign Fund.” Jason Sugarman, another affiliate of the group, has had multiple legal problems related to improprieties at the Banc of California where his brother was CEO, and was involved in the fraudulent tribal bond scheme that has embroiled multiple partners and affiliates of this business circle (Jason and John Galanis, Bevan Cooney, and Devon Archer). James Bulger, the aforementioned nephew of Boston gang kingpin Whitey Bulger, who is “Chairman of Thornton actively involved in Sino-U.S. trade in the energy and infrastructure sectors,” two sectors where the ability to do business with despots or those who would dole out large scale crony public contracts, was an absolute prerequisite. Paul Sohn, was a former portfolio manager at Soros Fund Management. Sir Anthony Jolliffe, was the former Lord Mayor of London and a “senior advisor to numerous Chinese provincial governments.” And two Chinese nationals were involved; the first was Yuji Zhao, an investment manager and “expert in SOE management and reforms.” In China, SOE management is strictly the domain of those highly connected in the CCP as these are political appointments. The second, Zhixiang Hua, is a former executive of several companies including HNA Group. HNA is one of the largest diversified CCP connected conglomerates, with 700k employees and investments all over the world in a multitude of sectors. HNA is also a dumping ground for Chinese intel assets when the CCP trains them and then has them go forth and conquer in the battlefield of the 21st century global capital markets. It’s an impressive group, if the goal is global influence peddling and engaging in economic imperialism on behalf of the CCP.
A great case in point as to this model of economic imperialism and how it works and what its goals are can be seen with the Chinese telco equipment company Huawei. Huawei is the foremost example that is illustrative of these aims and as such is heavily subsidized by the Chinese state (read: CCP) to innovate quicker and sell cheaper the infrastructure necessary in the 5G network buildout arms race going on right now across the globe and especially in Western developed economies. What is the political goal that short term economic upside is sacrificed for in this case? To build a backdoor into Western communication networks from which intel can be gathered.
An example of the BHR team’s execution of this model was demonstrated in 2015 with the acquisition of Henniges automotive by the sanctioned Chinese defense contractor Aviation Industry Corporation (AVIC). Henniges is a dual-use manufacturer and its sale to AVIC and BHR was facilitated by the Biden family and affiliates. The sale was approved by the Committee of Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) which is a political determination made on Capitol Hill.
This approval is reminiscent of the famous Uranium One deal, where this Canadian based company, with large uranium mineral interests in American uranium mines in the Western U.S., was able to get approval from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to green light the change of control of a strategic asset (the material needed for nuclear weaponry) by allowing the sale (without forced divestiture to a non-hostile or adversarial actor- an action the State Department could have mandated), to the Russian nuclear energy concern Rosatom. Both of these decisions required buy-in and approval by the highest ranking American political decision makers regarding our national interest as it relates to security and foreign policy.
The fact that CFIUS approved the deal is alarming given that Henniges owns numerous facilities in the United States that are now controlled by a Chinese military front company, writes Breitbart.
In addition to the activity the Rosemont Seneca partners and associates were engaged in with the Chinese and those connected to the CCP, merely a few facets of which we describe above, they were also deeply involved in other theaters of commerce that were unsavory to say the least. Of course there is the well investigated and verified activity of Biden and Archer’s board memberships on the private Ukrainian oil and gas company Burisma (that Peter Schweizer literally wrote the book on).
It was also brought to light by the Bevan Cooney emails that Biden, Archer, Galanis, et al also engaged in a client relationship with a Russian mob tied oligarch Yelena Baturina. In late 2013 and into early 2014 they were retained by her to help her get banked in the U.S. and obtain bank and brokerage accounts using their affiliated broker dealer securities firm, Burnham Securities (a subsidiary of Burnham Financial Group which also controlled Burnham Asset Management- where Hunter Biden served on the board as Vice Chairman) and JP Morgan, Burnham’s prime broker and clearing firm, which as such, needed to approve her as a client as well. This was some serious Russia collusion that we are sure the Mueller Special Counsel would have been interested in. Or perhaps not since it occurred within the circle of democrat bigwigs and not having anything to do with the current Commander-in-Chief.
According to the minutes of the August 2014 board meeting of the Burnham Financial family of companies: “Mr. Archer (a board member) further discussed the possible sale of his company and the revenues that might be realized, which he said would be a big liquidity event for him, as well as his connections with Bohai, which he said was sponsored by major banks and institutional investors in China. He also discussed his client relationship with Yelena Baturina [wife of the former mayor of Moscow], who he said had invested over $200 million dollars in his various investment funds.”
So now we have Russia, China, and Ukraine as places this team was doing business in 2013-2016 whilst Papa Joe was Veep and John Kerry was heading the State Department. We can also add to the pile Kazakstan. Another kleptocracy of the post-Soviet ‘stans,’ Kazakhstan is a superlatively resource-rich oligarchy run by the iron fist of Nursultan Nazerbayev -a close ally of Putin and even a role model for “Vlad the Revancher” given his consistent grip on power since 1989 and until his “retirement” last year (a highly disputed abdication given his current position still in government as Chairman of the Security Council). Kazakhstan ruled by Nazarbayev, true kleptocratic strongman that he is, was the perfect client in which to sell influence and participate in resource exploitation in the name of competitive Western business practices. In February 2014, Archer bragged about squiring the Kazakh foreign minister around Washington, D.C., an activity that would usually require FARA (Foreign Agent Registration Act) lobbying disclosure. Those mandatory disclosures were never filed by anyone in the Biden-Archer-Heinz partnership nor any of their associates or affiliates. During the August 2014 Burnham board meeting, Archer stated at the end of it that “he would be meeting with bankers involved with the Kazakhstan sovereign wealth fund to explore possible opportunities for investment.” Interestingly, recall that in the BHR “Global Network” marketing slide (above) Archer had in his bio that he was an “Independent director of Kazakhstan’s Sovereign Fund.” Archer was certainly looking toward Kazakhstan as another greenfield opportunity in which to practice business the Rosemont Seneca way.
To conclude, we have a very powerful political family from the Democratic Party and the Obama administration, selling its influence across the world for personal gain. In reality, the Bidens were selling the American people out to our adversaries for personal wealth accumulation and at the same time allowing hostile actors to gain at our expense. In the case of China, the Bidens helped them along with their long-term plan to conquer the West through economic imperialism, which has been the current phase undertaken to achieve their hegemonic ambitions.
China is hellbent on controlling the world. It’s censorship, military aggression in the South China Sea, the One Belt One Road project, which uses debt as a weapon to gain infrastructure and raw materials around the world, are all part of this agenda.
In the Bidens, Mao’s proteges saw the perfect opportunity to weaken and exploit the leading sovereign of the free world – the United States – and use America’s political power, a usurpation attempted through economic means, for its nefarious ends.
Ukrainian, Russian, and Kazak “partners” of the Bidens and their crew also engaged this team for their own ends, some motivated by financial corruption and venality, others were politically motivated. There will no doubt be more stories coming from these theaters and others.
The one consistent thing to glean across all these self-interested activities was that Joe Biden, “the Big Guy,” and “my chairman” according to Hunter’s own recently-uncovered communications, was only too happy to oblige and help in any way he could, and to line his own pocket as we have seen throughout the panoply of recent proofs, no matter the damage to his son, the American people, or the Western free world.
Matthew Tyrmand is an investigative journalist who recently brought to light former Biden and Archer business partner Bevan Cooney’s emails. He has broken stories related to China, Russia, & Kazakhstan from this trove of prima facie evidence working closely with Peter Schweizer and Seamus Bruner. Find more primary source documents on Matthew’s Scribd page.
L Todd Wood is the Founder and Publisher of CDMedia, cdm.press.
