James Biden hired a private investigator—a retired Secret Service agent who served on the security detail for Joe Biden—to find out whether a Chinese client suspected of bribery had an arrest warrant against him, a bombshell revelation that contradicts what the former first brother told Congress in a deposition last year.
Biden told House investigators in February 2024 he asked former Secret Service agent Dale Pupillo in 2017 to run a background check on Patrick Ho, an official with CEFC China Energy, a Chinese energy conglomerate with which Biden and his nephew Hunter Biden had a multimillion-dollar consulting contract.
Biden, who was warned he could be charged with perjury for lying in the interview, testified the background check was simply due diligence for his “own edification” prior to meeting with Hunter and Ho in Hong Kong. The background check was “not to inform or anything else,” said Biden. And asked by House Republicans whether the background check was “to try and understand whether or not there was a Federal investigation of Patrick Ho,” Biden replied: “I have no idea.”
But a new Department of Justice inspector general report casts doubt on that story. According to the report, Biden explicitly asked the private eye in November 2017 to find out whether the FBI had warrants against Ho.
“Have info on an individual,” Biden wrote the investigator on Nov. 12, 2017. “I need a background on one specific issue.”
The retired agent, who is referred to as “Retired USSS Agent-1” in the report, told the FBI on Oct. 25, 2021, Biden informed him “we have information from China that Ho may be arrested.” Biden said Ho wanted to travel to the United States for a CEFC event but was concerned he would be arrested, according to the report.
The agent told Biden he did not find a warrant against Ho, but cautioned warrants are “sensitive” and not always detectable to private investigators. According to the inspector general, the FBI concluded Ho decided to attend the CEFC event “after James Biden or another individual likely told Ho, relying on information provided by a private investigator, that it was safe for Ho to return to the United States.”
Indeed, the FBI did have an arrest warrant out against Ho, and arrested him in New York on Nov. 16, 2017, on charges he offered bribes to African officials for oil rights on behalf of CEFC. He was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison.
The inspector general report raises questions about whether Biden lied to Congress about his efforts on behalf of Ho, while revealing the Biden administration obtained information the president’s brother sought confidential government information in order to help a corrupt Chinese business partner.
Investigators have probed the Biden family’s unusual arrangement with CEFC. The firm paid Hunter and James Biden more than $5 million in 2017 to scout out potential energy deals for the company in the United States. CEFC chairman Ye Jianming gave Hunter Biden a large diamond worth around $80,000 during a meeting in Miami in May 2017. And after Ho’s arrest, CEFC paid Hunter Biden $1 million to represent Ho. Biden, who referred to Ho as “the fucking spy chief of China” in private messages, never appeared on behalf of Ho during his trial.
Whether James Biden lied to Congress may be a moot point given Joe Biden pardoned his younger brother on his final day in office. The elder Biden said the controversial pardon was warranted because his family had been “subjected to unrelenting attacks and threats, motivated solely by a desire to hurt me.” Biden pardoned Hunter on Dec. 2, days before the former first son was to face sentencing on gun and tax fraud convictions.
The inspector general report focuses mainly on the actions of Charles McGonigal, a former FBI counterintelligence official who was convicted of taking bribes from an Albanian official identified as Dorian Ducka.
McGonigal also led the FBI’s investigation into CEFC, according to the inspector general report. While leading the probe, McGonigal told Ducka, an adviser to CEFC, about the FBI investigation and pending arrests against CEFC officials.
McGonigal provided the tip to Ducka days before the Bidens traveled to Hong Kong to meet with Ho, according to the inspector general report.
The report does not speculate about how James Biden learned of concerns that Ho had an arrest warrant. But Biden provided his Secret Service contact with detailed information about the targets of the FBI probe.
According to the report, the retired agent wrote to a colleague there were “Possibly 3 Chinese and 1 Israeli on the warrant.” Indeed, the FBI initially had warrants for other Chinese nationals besides Ho, as well as an Israeli-American energy consultant named Gal Luft.
Luft, who worked closely with Ho, told the FBI in an interview in 2019 someone inside the federal government had tipped off CEFC about an active criminal investigation into the company in 2017.
The Biden Justice Department indicted Luft on July 10, 2023, accusing him of working as a foreign agent of China and lying to the FBI during the 2019 interview.
“DOJ is trying to bury me to protect Joe,Jim&Hunter Biden,” Luft wrote at the time.
Biden and an attorney who accompanied him during his House deposition did not respond to requests for comment. Pupillo, who retired from the Secret Service in 2015, did not respond to a request for comment.
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