Biden Says He Never Discussed Family Business with Hunter . . . but Wrote Recommendation Letter to Get Chinese Business Partner into Ivy League School: Report

President Biden persists in claiming that he never discussed the Biden family business with his son Hunter — i.e., the business in which Hunter and the president’s brother Jim have spent decades cashing in on Joe’s political influence, particularly in corrupt and authoritarian countries, including those inimical to American interests.

The evidence that the president is lying continues to mount.

In the latest news on that score, it appears that in 2017, Biden wrote a letter of recommendation for one of Hunter’s Chinese business partners — a letter aimed at getting the partner’s son admitted to Brown University.

Based on a review of emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop, Fox News reports that at the start of 2017, Jonathan Li reached out to Hunter and his American business associates, Devon Archer and James Bulger, asking them for “advice” to supplement the college applications of Li’s son, Christopher. He was applying to two of the Ivies, Brown and Cornell, as well as another top school, New York University, at which admissions are very competitive.

To recap, Li was a honcho at the Chinese equity firm, Bohai Capital. He became Hunter’s partner in a very lucrative venture, Bohai Harvest RST. They began discussing the venture in 2012, but it got off the ground in 2013, when Hunter hitched a ride on Air Force Two with his father, then the vice president, who was headed to Beijing on behalf of the Obama administration for discussions with President Xi. According to an investigative report compiled by Republican senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson, Hunter visited with Li and arranged for him to shake hands with Vice President Biden. Shortly after the trip, Beijing licensed the venture.

The name Bohai Harvest RST is telling. On the Chinese side, Bohai Capital was backed by Chinese regime-owned shareholders, including the government’s postal bank, its main development bank, and the Bank of China. It put up over $3 billion in funding.

As for the American side, the “RS” in RST stands for Rosemont Seneca, the super-connected partnership formed by Hunter Biden, Christopher Heinz (who is the stepson of John Kerry, the former Democratic presidential candidate who was Obama’s secretary of state at the time), and Devon Archer, a longtime friend of Hunter and Heinz. (Archer was recently sentenced to a year in prison on a felony business-fraud conviction.) The “T” in RST stands for the Thornton Group, a Boston equity firm run by James Bulger — the nephew of the notorious mobster James “Whitey” Bulger, and son of William Bulger, the longtime Democratic leader of the Massachusetts state senate (who was forced to resign as president of UMass when it was revealed he was communicating with his then-fugitive brother).

As the Fox report relates, upon receiving Li’s email requesting assistance for his son, James Bulger responded, “Lets [sic] see how we can be helpful to Chris [Li].” The Fox report continues:

Several weeks later, on Feb. 18, 2017, Eric Schwerin, who served as president of Rosemont Seneca, replied to Li.

“Jonathan, Hunter asked me to send you a copy of the recommendation letter that he asked his father to write on behalf of Christopher for Brown University,” Schwerin wrote.

“The original is being FedExed to Dr. Paxson directly at Brown,” Schwerin wrote. “It should be there by Tuesday at the latest (given Monday is a holiday here in the U.S.). Let us know if you have any questions. Best, Eric.”

Dr. Christina Paxson is the president of Brown University. On February 19, Jonathan Li wrote back to Scherwin (copying Hunter), glowing that the letter was “just great! Thank you very much! And Hunter, thank you very much too.”

Brown declined to share Joe Biden’s recommendation letter with Fox News, or to confirm whether Christopher Li attended the university.

When asked by Fox News about the letter of recommendation, White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates dodged, replying, “We don’t comment on the laptop.” Of course, the laptop isn’t the issue. President Biden’s knowledge of and participation in his son’s highly profitable business dealings with China, and their potential influence on Biden-administration policy, is the issue.

As I detailed in a piece for the latest issue of NR magazine, the Bohai Harvest RST venture “joined with an arm of the Chinese armed forces to purchase Amer­ican ‘dual use’ items that have military applications. It also facilitated a Chinese company’s $3.8 billion purchase of a coveted cobalt mine in Congo. Cobalt is a key component in batteries that power electric cars.”

Hunter Biden has been advised by the Justice Department that he is the subject of a criminal investigation. While he gingerly refers to the probe as related to “my tax affairs,” prosecutors are reportedly scrutinizing his business deals with people and entities from China, Russia, Ukraine, and possibly other countries. They are said to be considering whether Hunter committed felony violations of FARA (the law that requires agents of foreign powers to register with the U.S. government) and of the money-laundering laws, among other possible offenses.