CNN anchor Erin Burnett admitted on Friday that new revelations about millions of dollars paid to the Biden family “doesn’t look good.”
What is the background?
The House Oversight Committee disclosed financial documents last week showing that three Biden family members — Hunter Biden, James Biden, and Hallie Biden — and their companies received $1.3 million from accounts related to Biden family associate Rob Walker between 2015 and 2017.
The majority of scrutiny, however, came on a payment sent just weeks after Joe Biden left office as vice president.
The House Oversight Committee explained in a statement:
[O]n March 1, 2017, less than two months after Vice Presient Joe Biden left public office, State Energy HK Limited, a Chinese company, wired $3 million to Rob Walker’s company. The next day, the company wired $1,065,000 to a company associated with James Gilliar, another Biden family associate.
Afterwards, the Biden family received approximately $1,065,000 in payments over a three-month period in different bank accounts. From the bank records, it appears that the Biden family received approximately one-third of the money obtained from the China wire.
What happened on CNN?
On her CNN show, Burnett responded to the revelations by making an astute observation.
“It doesn’t sound good,” she declared.
“There’s a guy whose name is John Robinson Walker, he gets $3 million from a Chinese-based company and proceeds to wire it out to a bunch of people named Biden,” she continued. “One of whom is Hunter Biden, another one is a company that belongs to the president’s brother, James Biden, and another amount of money to Beau Biden’s widow, Hallie.”
“That doesn’t look good,” she added.
Legal expert Ryan Goodman, a former special counsel to the general counsel at the Defense Department, confirmed the allegations suggested unethical activity. He doubted, however, what crimes they could suggest.
“When I look at all the facts that are alleged in the four-page memo, it looks potentially unethical,” he said. “But it’s difficult to match up with any illegality or crime and for all the reasons that you say and more.
“The fact that there’s a pass — the money is not even going directly to these members of the Biden family but through this third person,” he continued. “The timing of it, two months after he steps down as vice president. This is happening with his family. One of the payments is 2015. That’s starting to look like it’s potentially influence peddling, but not illegal.”
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