Tony Bobulinski's Hunter Biden Story Adds Up to Nothing: But Let's Drill Down Into the Details

Stripped away of embellishments and histrionics, Tony Bobulinki’s story adds up to almost nothing.

To be clear, his claims are but a subset of the fast and furious allegations recently lobbed against Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. The former business partner doesn’t have anything to say about Rudy Giuliani’s charges that Hunter facilitated corruption at Burisma, was paid $3.5 million investment by the wife of the mayor of Moscow, smoked crack and abused a 14-year-old girl. There’s also the story that the DEA apprehended Hunter’s laptop from the discredited race baiting Fox News psychiatrist Keith Ablow. (No one has explained why anyone would leave a laptop with his psychiatrist and why the DEA would know about it.) Then there are the supposed Hunter Biden sex videos broadcast on Russian T.V.

You may not have heard about these allegations, and the absence of coverage has triggered right wing outlets to decry liberal censorship or a conspiracy of silence. It seems clear that Hunter Biden is destined to become another rightwing meme, like Benghazi or Obamagate, which triggers conservatives who salivate like Pavlov’s dogs.

Here we focus only on Bobulinski’s narrative, which is touted on Tucker Carlson, the opinion page of The Wall Street Journal, and, of course, the Trump campaign. It’s hard to follow because he tries to connect some disparate dots that are only significant in Bobulinski’s imagination.

So what happened?

It's a saga about some people with big ideas that went nowhere. In 2017 Hunter Biden, Tony Bobulinski, Joe Biden’s brother Jim and two others set up a company called SinoHawk Holdings, which never became operational because it was never funded. The venture was supposed to earn income by presenting investment opportunities to CEFC China Energy, a multibillion dollar Chinese conglomerate.

Hunter had been courting CEFC’s chairman and majority shareholder, Ye Jianming, who beginning in 2002 turned a small oil trading operation into a behemoth. In 2018 CEFC collapsed under the weight of a massive fraud. Ye was arrested in China and has not been heard from in a while.

The size of the SinoHawk, capitalized at $10 million, was tiny for any midsized energy company, much less a giant like CEFC. But the partners had dreams of big growth. The documentation shows that Joe Biden never participated in the transaction, and there’s no real evidence that he ever paid attention to it.

So what is Bobulinski talking about? What is the smoking gun that, he claims, proves Joe Biden to be a liar? There are two things:

1. An “incriminating email”: In some 2017 emails among Hunter, Bobulinski and others, Hunter referred to a 10% equity stake that would be allocated to “the big guy,” which was supposed to be a code for the former Vice President. This purportedly disproved Joe Biden’s claim that he never took a penny from foreign investments.

Whoever Hunter referred to as “the big guy” doesn’t change the relevant legal documents, which show that Joe Biden had no part in the deal. Bobulinski admits that 10% stake in question was allocated to Jim Biden. Maybe Hunter had hoped to get his father involved in his business. Who knows? But it’s very common in correspondence on a prospective deal to go back and forth about terms that evolve before being pinned down in final documentation.

2. The Beverly Hills meeting: Joe Biden met with his son, his brother and Bobulinski after speaking at the Milken Investment Conference in Beverly Hills in May 2017. This supposedly refutes the claim that Joe never discussed his Hunter’s business with his son. But the discussion, as recounted by Bobulinski in his interview with Tucker Carlson, never veered into anything substantive; it sounded like an innocuous social encounter.

In his “press conference,” which allowed no questions, Bobulinski said that, “we discussed the Biden’s history, the Biden’s family business plans with the Chinese, with which he was plainly familiar, at least at a high level.” It seems likely that Joe Biden knew they were forming a business to find non-Chinese investments for a Chinese energy company, but there wasn't any business to discuss because anything beyond that broad concept was entirely speculative.

Maybe they wanted to make a soft pitch to entice the former Vice President to consider participating. But there’s no evidence that a casual social contact led something more.

“Maligned in the media”: Bobulinski also says that Rep. Adam Schiff and the Biden family maligned him by saying he’s part of a Russian disinformation campaign. Except no one accused him of anything. It’s all in his imagination. Schiff and others said the story looked and sounded like a Russian smear campaign. Bobulinski says he felt the need to speak out in order to clear his name, which showed up on an uncovered email. His claim doesn't jibe with a New York Times story that says he was talking to The Wall Street Journal before the infamous New York Post story broke. (The Journal’s news reporters found nothing illicit in any of the records and found nothing that tied in Joe Biden.)

Don’t forget Burisma: Also, Bobulinski told Sinclair that he was interviewed for five hours by six FBI agents. That’s a lot of time and resources to investigate a small deal that was stillborn. He said the FBI told him he was a material witness to an ongoing investigation, which, if it were true, is an odd thing for the FBI to divulge. Others have reported that Hunter’s laptop was being held for a year-long money laundering investigation; though there’s no evidence that SinoHawk ever had money to launder.

Bobulinski says he offered insights into transactions in which he played no part. He told Sinclair, “I can assure you that the agents in that room, when we walked through the text messages where Hunter Biden outlines he’s on the back of Mykola the founder of Burisma’s yacht, in Monaco, that they were at full attention, taking extensive notes and asked multiple questions.” Contrary to his insinuations, it’s not a crime to rub elbows with the rich and famous.

Supplementing the story with lies: Bobulinski’s champion, faced with the challenge of making something out of nothing, lied on Tucker Carlson’s show. Twice. Kimberly Strassel of The Wall Street Journal editorial page lied and said that SinoHawk had closed on transactions, even though it hadn’t. And she lied and said the Journal’s news staff reported that SinoHawk had closed transactions, even though they reported the opposite. Which tells you everything you need to know about Strassel and the Journal's editorial page.

Amplifying the bizarre nature of the narrative: Tucker Carlson announced on television that Bobulinski’s documents had mysteriously gone missing in transit via UPS. UPS had located the package, which had been opened so that the documents were removed. Sinister play? Could it be that deep state forces had infiltrated Fox News and UPS so that they knew ahead of time that incriminating documents, for a deal that was never funded, were about to explode on cable T.V. so that they had to be stolen before they could see the light of day? Not that Tucker Carlson ever pushes conspiracy theories. Not to worry. Fox News maintained a copy of the documents, and who knows when the new dirt will emerge?

There are more levels of deception in Bobulinski’s narrative, but those are the key points. If you’re interested in more, read further.

More detail on the business deal: SinoHawk Holdings was a 50/50 joint venture between an American company indirectly owned by Ye (Chinese stake) and a limited liability company (American stake) with five owners, Jim Biden, Hunter Biden, Bobulinski, James Gilliar and Rob Walker. The five owners had coequal stakes in the American stake. Every individual associated with SinoHawk was insulated via his own limited liability company. The joint venture was supposed to, “engage in consulting services regarding various investment opportunities for CEFC.”

Investments can be anything located anywhere. Despite its name, only 60% of CEFC China Energy’s business was energy-related in China. The conglomerate made European acquisitions in financial services, hotels, media and a brewery.

Some possibilities were outlined by James Gilliar, an Englishman who heads an entity called European Energy and Infrastructure Group. He prepared a document showing opportunities in oil and gas drilling in Oman and Colombia, real estate in Romania, and a bank in Luxembourg. Also, “after several weeks of negotiating, I have managed to persuade the Royal Office and Omani government to deliver a host of projects that are only open to CEFC China to investing; a unique series of opportunities.” They included an infrastructure fund, fisheries, a new refinery, a port project, a tourist resort, a railway project and a hospital.

Ye had strong contacts in the Chinese government, which would have been necessary to obtain oil drilling rights. CEFC’s eventual downfall sounds vaguely similar to Enron.

SinoHawk was to be capitalized with $10 million in equity funded by CEFC. CEFC was supposed to extend $5 million in nonrecourse loans to be repaid out of the equity in the American stake.

Bobulinski tried to make it all sound bigger than it was, by suggesting that the venture would fund the investments, not just find them. SinoHawk, “was to invest in infrastructure, real estate, and technology in the US and around the world, and the entity would initially be capitalized with $10 million, and then grow to billions of dollars of investment capital,” he said.

Partners: What did these guys bring to the table? Gilliar seemed to bring some expertise in project finance and access to the government of Oman.

Hunter had a relationship with Ye and some kind of track record with another investment fund. As The New Yorker reported last year, being the son or brother of a former Vice President can open doors that bring opportunities to buy into private equity deals not available to the man on the street.

Contrary to media reports, Hunter was not exactly a slacker. A graduate of Yale Law School, he had worked for years as an executive at MNBA, a credit card firm, had taught as an adjunct at Georgetown Law School, and had practiced law at David Boies’ law firm. Hunter was also involved in another investment fund, Rosemont Seneca Partners. Of course, he served on the board of the Ukraine gas company, Burisma, from which one might acquire some expertise in energy investments or doing business in Eastern Europe.

Bobulinski says, “After leaving the military I became an institutional investor investing extensively around the world and on every continent. I have traveled to over 50 countries.” OK. A little more detail would have been helpful. Whose money did he invest? And what kind of investments were they? How big were they? Bobulinski says Gilliar brought him into the deal.

The only thing people have found out about Bobulinski is that he got embroiled in some investment that went bad and ended up in litigation. In 2015 and 2016 he lent $650,000 to a Cayman Islands company called China Branding Group. He sued the company when it was in liquidation, lost, and ended up owing China Branding’s liquidators court costs totaling $562,000. This digression is only relevant because it suggests, like his interview with Tucker Carlson, that this is a guy who gets in over his head.

What motivates Bobulinski? For months after the contracts were signed in May 2017, partners in the American stake kept waiting for CEFC to fund SinoHawk. Ye, heading up a global conglomerate, clearly had bigger things to worry about, above and beyond the fraudulent side of his empire. In September 2017 CEFC announced its $9 billion purchase of a slice of Rosneft, the Russian oil giant. This transaction was touted as having major geopolitical implications between Russia and China. That massive deal, which eventually fell apart, suggested CEFC may have satiated its apetite for doing smaller deals through SinoHawk.

If Bobulinski and others felt they were being strung along, their instincts were probably correct. But what got Bobulinski's ire was other small movements of funds unearthed by Sen. Ron Johnson’s report on Hunter Biden, released on September 23. While Bobulinski was waiting for CEFC to wire $10 million to commence SinoHawk, CEFC through various shell companies was wiring a few million dollars in legal fees and consulting fees to Hunter's law firm. Also, Hunter got CEFC to consider a $40 million Louisiana natural gas acquisition, which fell through. Bobulinski apparently thought Hunter was making side deals behind his back. But the bigger picture was that they all put a lot of time and effort into an ambitious venture with nothing to show for it because their deep pocket was a house of cards.

Bobulinski on Tucker Carlson: Bobulinski sure didn’t sound like somebody who would inspire confidence to savvy investors when he appeared on Fox News. People in business are impatient; they want you to focus on the issue and get to the point. The story he told Carlson was full of extraneous details, which might sound lurid and dramatic if you thought The Apprentice is real, but obscure the substance of his claims. Here’s a sample:

CARLSON: So, I just want to backup a second. Just to be clear, you met with Joe Biden twice?

BOBULINSKI: Yes, that’s correct.

CARLSON: What did he say to you after — so he gives his speech at the Milken Conference. I mean, this is all checkable —

BOBULINSKI: Yes.

CARLSON: Right? I mean, that was a public event —

BOBULINSKI: Oh, yes.

CARLSON: You can Google it.

BOBULINSKI: Well, you can go to Milken. They had to issue me — I didn’t — I wasn’t attending Milken. So they had to issue me special credentials. A whole team walked out into the valet of Tthe Beverly Hilton and walked me into that speech that he gave and sat me at the head table in front of everyone.

So this is more than checkable. I’m sure there’s photos or documentation and stuff like that.

CARLSON: Yes, the press corps doesn’t seem to be rushing to verify this. …

CARLSON: Tell me about the conversation that you had with Joe Biden. What did — what did he say to you?

BOBULINSKI: You mean the morning after he spoke?

CARLSON: That’s right.

BOBULINSKI: It just — it was — there was 10 people running around getting him something to drink. And we were backstage in a cramped space. And he asked me to walk with him out to the car and he just asked, you know, how I did and what I thought of his speech.

And I thought he did a great job on the speech. And obviously cancer is a very serious thing that we should all be working together to solve. I just lost a sister-in-law within the last two weeks, sadly, to cancer. And then he just sort of asked me to keep an eye on his son and his brother.

CARLSON: What — what do you think he meant by that?

BOBULINSKI: I think he was conscious of things. And you know, I can’t speak for him —

CARLSON: Right.

BOBULINSKI: Maybe — I would love for him to go on record. You know, as I referenced earlier, I’m only sitting here because they have not — not only have they not gone on record, they’ve denied it and they’ve tarred my family name and a long history of serving this country — and have other congressmen out talking about Russian disinformation.

I held a top secret clearance from the NSA and the DOE. I served this country for four years in one of the most elite environments in the world, Naval Nuclear Power Training Command.

And to have a congressman out there speaking about Russian disinformation or Joe Biden at a — at a public debate referencing Russian disinformation, when he knows he sat face-to-face with me, that I was — traveled around the world with his son and his brother, to say that and associate that with my name is absolutely disgusting to me.

Notice the sleight of hand. Bobulinski glosses over what he and Joe Biden talked about and segues into a greneralized claim, about Russian dirty tricks and smear tactics, being aimed at him personally.

CARLSON: So it was clear to you that Joe Biden’s son had told him about this business deal?

BOBULINSKI: Crystal clear.

CARLSON: Crystal clear. Tell us about the conversation that subsequently occurred between you and Joe Biden.

BOBULINSKI: So the conversation — as you’re well aware, Tucker, I grew up the son of a career naval officer, so the president of the United States was always the commander-in-chief, whether they were a Democrat or a Republican or other, and so I had the highest respect for Joe and the office that he had held. And so, I stood up and shook his hand.

And obviously, we sat down and I think ordered some drinks. I think Jim Biden was hungry and might have ordered some food. And you know, Joe asked me to talk about my background, my family. He thanked me for my service. I’m obviously very proud of that, proud of my brother’s service and my grandfather’s service.

And then he walked through sort of his family, you know, obviously some of the tragedies they’ve dealt with, his political career, on a high level.

We didn’t go into too much detail on business, because prior to Joe showing up Hunter and Jim had coached me, listen, we won’t go into too much detail here, so just a high-level discussion and meeting. So it’s not like I was drilling down with Joe about cap tables and details.

Again, he’s talking about a nascent deal that was entirely speculative, so there never were any cap tables to talk about. The way Bobulinski describes it, the conversation never moved beyond the level of a 30-second elevator pitch used in any standard meet and greet.

Bobulinski has done himself no favors if he wants to pursue a calling as an institutional investor, because he seems unable to focus on the critical distinctions one would expect of a first-year analyst.

It’s pretty obvious why he has made himself available to right wing outlets like Sinclair and Fox News but not to NBC or other outlets that might apply some common sense skepticism. He is not ready for prime time.