Best as I can tell, Tony Bobulinski is not among the Hunter Biden business associates described in his tax indictment. Here’s the likely identity of those named:
- Business Associate 1: Rob Walker
- Business Associate 2: James Gilliar
- Business Associate 3: James Biden
- Business Associate 4: Eric Schwerin
- Business Associate 5: Devon Archer
Bobulinski would naturally appear — arguably, should appear — in this narrative:
During the next two years the Defendant, Business Associate 1, and Business Associate 2 continued to meet with individuals associated with CEFC, including in February 2017, with CEFC’s then-Chairman (hereafter “the Chairman”).
10. On or about March 1, 2017, State Energy HK, a Hong Kong entity associated with CEFC, paid approximately $3 million to Business Associate 1’s entity for sourcing deals and for identifying other potential ventures. The Defendant had an oral agreement with Business Associate 1 to receive one-third of those funds, or a million dollars. The Defendant, in turn, directed a portion of those million dollars to Business Associate 3.
11. After the State Energy HK payment, the Defendant, Business Associate 1, and Business Associate 2 began negotiating a joint venture with individuals associated with CEFC, which they called SinoHawk.
12. Over the summer of 2017, the Defendant cut out his SinoHawk business partners and separately negotiated a venture with individuals associated with CEFC called Hudson West III (“HWIII”). [my emphasis]
The entire passage is written to avoid mentioning a number of details that remain hotly contested. For example, the indictment doesn’t mention on what date in February 2017 the meeting in Miami with Chairman Ye occurred, which would determine whether or not it was even possible for Tony Bobulinski to attend, as Bobulisnki — in between meetings with Trump and Trump’s Chief of Staff — told the FBI he had, but which Abbe Lowell claims he did not.
The passage neglects to mention that Bobulinski worked with Walker, Gilliar, and Hunter to set up SinoHawk. It definitely doesn’t mention that the driving reason why Hunter “cut out his SinoHawk business partners,” which definitely included Bobulinski but which as written does not, was because Hunter thought Bobulinski was an asshole, both Hunter and Walker had concerns about Bobulinski’s Russian business ties, James Biden had concerns about his ties to pornography, and Walker, James Biden, and Hunter all thought he was a terrible fit for the group.
That said, note that ¶10 is wholly inconsistent with the “10 held by H for the big guy” conspiracy theories that Bobulisnki pushed to Republicans for years.
I await bulk corrections from virtually every Murdoch property.
David Weiss has simply disappeared Tony Bobulinski’s role in any of this.
Poof!
Weiss similarly made no mention of a diamond — or potentially two — another claim pushed by Bobulinski that the frothy right — and Congress, to the extent they’re distinguishable from the frothy right — has been chasing.
Whether or not the diamond had value is central to the topic of this indictment: what Hunter Biden earned and whether he paid taxes on those earnings. James Biden told investigators that the diamond was worthless, which may explain why the indictment doesn’t mention it. But if CEFC was handing Hunter one or more fake diamonds, it changes the nature of what was going on.
Admittedly, it may be easier for Weiss to prosecute the tax case by simply disappearing Tony Bobulinski from his allegations. Perhaps he’s trying to limit the discovery he has to provide to Hunter Biden. Perhaps he’s trying to avoid having to turn over the interview report that Joseph Ziegler already made public. But even in this passage of the indictment, Weiss is misrepresenting what the public evidence supports.
Or perhaps David Weiss’ disappearance of Tony Bobulinski is more than that.
The public record raises real questions about whether the past treatment of Bobulinski’s claims has tainted this investigation, a tax investigation.
In an affidavit accompanying the Bobulinski interview report he released, Ziegler explained that he was providing it because he didn’t get a chance to interview Bobulinski, yet another complaint from him about prosecutors’ likely attempts to avoid tainting the investigation that he now spins as political bias.
In investigative team meetings that occurred after this, I can recall that agents on the investigative team brought up on multiple occasions to the assigned prosecutors that they wanted to do an interview of Bobulinski with the assigned case agents. I can recall being told that they would think about it and then ultimately being told there was no need for the team to interview Bobulinski and that Bobulinski was not viewed as a credible witness.
Ziegler admitted that he had been told that Bobulinski was not credible.
In his statement to the House Ways and Means committee last week (basically a mulligan — an opportunity for him and Gary Shapley to clean up their past hearsay claims that have been entirely debunked by first-hand witnesses to the issues, in which both proceeded to repeat those debunked hearsay claims), Ziegler complained that the people who used the interview reports he released to discredit his hearsay claims are just a bunch of dummies. They simply don’t understand.
The evidence I turned over to the committee was not cherrypicked and again, further supports my claims I brought forward to the committee. There have been critics on the committee who have tried to impeach some of the interview memos turned over and it is apparent that they do not understand how interviews in criminal investigations occur. [my emphasis]
In an attempt to deflect blame for his release of this interview report, he confessed that the Tony Bobulinski interview is not, as HWAM has billed it, an FD-302, a finished interview report.
I would point the members of the committee to Affidavit 4, Exhibit 400A (PowerPoint). I think that some of the members missed the point regarding this memorandum from the FBI intake of information provided by Anthony Bobulinski. You’ll notice that this is not an FBI 302 but is just a written document drafted by the Washington DC FBI agents from this interaction. The interview was not recorded and Bobulinski was voluntarily providing information to the FBI Agents. Since Bobulinski is providing the information in the presence of FBI Special Agents, he would still be criminally liable under Title 18 USC Section 1001 if he were to make any false statements. The Hunter Biden investigative team, including myself, had asked the assigned prosecutors to conduct an interview of Bobulinski but we were denied that request, and were never able to interview him. Interviewing Bobulinski would be normal process and procedure as a part of a criminal investigation for the team to corroborate evidence obtained in the investigation, elaborate on investigative leads, challenge some of the allegations made, and ask pertinent questions regarding the investigation. Again, this was not done! [my emphasis]
His complaint that HWAM has labeled it as a 302 is their fault.
Complain about the dumb Republicans for this error, Joe! While you’re complaining, Joe, you should similarly complain that James Comer invited Bobulinski for a voluntary, not compelled, interview, making it far easier for Bobulinski to dodge questions about what Mark Meadows handed him at a clandestine meeting in November 2020.
But not all of us are dummies, Joe. I noted that it wasn’t a 302 here.
The Bobulinski interview report Ziegler released, however, has not been entered in the official 302 form and by title is just a revision of his interview, with the author marked as one of the agents in the original interview; it appears to have been saved from Microsoft Word.
The fact that it’s not a 302 raises questions about Ziegler’s conduct in sharing it. Why would Ziegler share it if it were never approved? Why did he share it even though he has access to at least some of the communications that Lowell released which suggest Bobulinski couldn’t be telling the truth? If investigators were told Bobulinski wasn’t credible, why do they continue to float the “10 to H for the big guy” claims? Why did Shapley make Lesley Wolf’s prohibition — some weeks after the Bobulinski interview — on asking about the “big guy” reference central to his purported whistleblower complaint?
The Bobulinski claims are part of the Ziegler and Shapley media tour that — Abbe Lowell claims — generated political pressure with the result that David Weiss reneged on a plea deal and instead charged his client with nine tax charges (and three gun charges).
How did Ziegler get this report if it hasn’t been finalized into the FBI system? Ziegler describes only that it “was provided to the RHB investigation team by agents with the FBI.”
This was a memo and attachment that was provided to the RHB investigative team by agents with the FBI regarding information that was provided to agents with the FBI Washington Field Office from Anthony Bobulinski.
In his House Judiciary Committee, Tim Thibault described following up with the agent who did the interview, “to make sure that Baltimore got the FD-302s … that the agents had written and to also make sure that anything he had turned over to the agents got there.”
I guess Thibault, who spent 26 years in the FBI, is a big dummy too, because he called it a 302, too (and suggested it did get entered into the eGuardian system).
But Ziegler is an IRS agent, not the FBI agents that Thibault tried to make sure received the interview report.
And Ziegler has confessed to have obtained the report — finalized 302 or not — of the interview that Tony Bobulinski gave the day after spending time with Donald Trump, weeks before (by Cassidy Hutchinson’s telling) being handed something at a secret meeting with Mark Meadows.
The IRS obtained questionable witness testimony from a guy represented by a Trump-associated lawyer, volunteered immediately after spending time with Trump. That gets closer and closer to the President making a request that the IRS conduct an investigation into Hunter Biden and his father, a violation of 26 USC 7217, which makes it a crime for the President, by name, to ask the IRS to target someone specifically.
It shall be unlawful for any applicable person to request, directly or indirectly, any officer or employee of the Internal Revenue Service to conduct or terminate an audit or other investigation of any particular taxpayer with respect to the tax liability of such taxpayer.
[snip]
(e)Applicable person
For purposes of this section, the term “applicable person” means—
(1)the President, the Vice President, any employee of the executive office of the President, and any employee of the executive office of the Vice President; [my emphasis]
And now, three years after Bobulinski went to the FBI and — between meetings with Trump and his Chief of Staff — told them things that may not have been true, David Weiss has charged Hunter with tax crimes in an indictment that mentions the failed joint venture, SinoHawk, of which Bobulinski was a part.
Yet he didn’t mention Bobulinski’s role in it.
David Weiss appears to have hidden the role that Tony Bobulinski plays in these events, going so far as to insinuate that Hunter cut the SinoHawk partners out because of greed rather than justified distrust of Bobulinski. And in so doing, Weiss has hidden the taint — Donald Trump’s taint — that Bobulinski’s testimony may have had on the IRS investigation.