In 2019, after former US vice-president Joe Biden announced he would run for the presidency in 2020, his opponents looked for ways of frustrating him. They saw his son, Hunter Biden, as his Achilles’ heel, particularly over his business dealings around the world. They were convinced that, if they dug deeply enough into his past, they could find things which would discredit Biden’s candidacy.
Among his business interests, Hunter has previously been a director of a Ukrainian gas company, Burisma, whose activities led to an investigation by the prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin. Biden’s opponents alleged that, while vice-president, he exerted pressure on Ukraine to fire Shokin, in order to kill the investigation. If true, this would clearly harm Biden, but it needed evidence. On Sept 25, 2019, therefore, when a White House memorandum was released of a July telephone call between US President Donald Trump and the new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, it revealed that the Bidens featured prominently, with Trump asking his counterpart to “look into” both men.
Trump said “there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that, so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great”. As the US has strict prohibition over foreign involvement in its democratic processes, the revelations sparked outrage in Washington, D.C. This was compounded once it emerged that Zelensky had also been told that, if he did not play ball, military assistance to his country would be withheld. The House Intelligence Committee’s chairman, Adam Schiff, described what had happened as “a classic mafia-like shakedown of a foreign leader”, and Trump was impeached for abuse of power. This, however, was ultimately voted down in the Senate, which his party controls, by 52 votes to 48.
Despite this fiasco, Trump supporters still regarded Hunter as fair game, convinced that his activities could be the undoing of his father. This time, however, they switched their attention to Hunter’s business dealings in China. In 2015, when his father was still vice-president, Hunter joined the board of a China-based equity fund, BHR Partners, and later took a 10 percent stake. After his father’s opponents alleged that they had both been involved in financial malfeasance, Hunter took steps to clear the air. On Oct 23, 2019, his lawyer, George Mesires, said his client had taken up his “unpaid position” with BHR because of “his interest in seeking ways to bring Chinese capital to investment markets”. He explained that Hunter did not acquire his stake in BHR until 2017, by which time his father was out of office. Hunter resigned from BHR in April 2020, but kept his stake.
There matters rested, until September, when a 64-page intelligence document, the creation of a bogus intelligence firm “Typhoon Investigations”, was posted to an anonymous blog, “Intelligence Quarterly”, with links to an academic called Christopher Balding. It alleged that Hunter had political ties in China, while his business dealings there had “questionable authorship and anonymous sourcing”. The author presumably hoped this would compromise Joe Biden himself.
On Oct 22, seven weeks after its original publication, Balding posted the document on his blog, at which point far-right media outlets hailed it as evidence that Biden was beholden to China. Trump’s outriders also seized on the report, with the former House speaker, Newt Gingrich, sharing it with his 2.3 million followers. As for Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, he waved it around on his talk show, gleefully calling it “supporting evidence” of the allegations against the Bidens. The only problem, however, was that the document was fake, with the Biden campaign condemning it as part of a “misinformation smear campaign”.
Indeed, its principal author, Marten Aspen, a Swiss security analyst, turned out to be non-existent, with his accompanying photograph having been artificially generated. When asked about this by the US media outlet NBC, Balding confirmed that Aspen had been created “solely for the purpose of releasing this report”. Although he said he himself “authored small parts of the report, and was involved in report preparation and review”, he refused to identify the principal author, as he required “anonymity”, due to what he called “personal and professional risks”. In other words, the real author would face repercussions if he was exposed, which might, presumably, also be criminal.
However, it was Balding’s next claim that most stunned observers. He told NBC that the document had been “commissioned by Apple Daily”, the newspaper owned by the Next Media founder, Jimmy Lai Chee-ying. He said that he dealt mainly with Mark Simon, Lai’s right-hand man, and the Apple Daily team in Taiwan.
On Oct 30, Apple Daily denied the allegation against it, although. Lai, a China critic with close ties to the US government, said he was “sorry” that his newspaper had been implicated, insisting that he was not personally involved in commissioning the document. He accepted, however, that the Taiwan-based Simon had “worked with the project”, and that he “used my private company’s money to reimburse for the research he requested”, adding that “it’s only US$10,000 so he didn’t have to have my approval”. Simon, meanwhile, announced his resignation, apologizing for having “allowed damage to Jimmy on a matter he was completely in the dark on”.
On Oct 31, moreover, Reuters reported that Apple Daily has been observing Hunter for some time. It recently published two articles about his ties to a Taiwanese businessman whom it described as a purported broker “enabling Hunter Biden’s deals in mainland China over a decade”. However, Apple Daily has stated that this story was undertaken by its investigative journalists in Taiwan, and is unrelated to the 64-page document. If true, this begs the question of why there is a preoccupation with Hunter, particularly at a time when his father is seeking the presidency.
Quite clearly, Lai appreciates the situation in which he finds himself, saying “it is hard for anyone to believe that I didn’t know about it and my integrity is damaged”, and he is quite right. He has, of course, forged close ties with Washington DC, and, on his visit in July 2019, he enjoyed privileged access to both Vice-President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. On May 28, he announced that “Trump is the only person who can save us” from China, and suggested that Trump should freeze the US assets of Chinese government officials. On Aug 19, following his arrest under the National Security Law, Trump sent him his “best wishes”, and, with the election looming, he presumably reciprocates the sentiment.
In the US, attempts to undermine the electoral process are taken very seriously indeed. So are organized efforts to damage candidates for office by making false allegations against them on the internet, which, at the very least, are libelous. Once the election is over, the US Department of Justice will need to investigate this shocking instance of election-related skulduggery, and identify who wrote the 64-page document and who was behind the project. It should then decide if there is evidence which establishes a criminal conspiracy, fraudulent activity, a violation of the US cybercrime law, or criminal libel.
If, thereafter, any charges were to be forthcoming against Balding, Simon or Lai, the US should have little difficulty in pursuing the first two, who are American citizens within its sphere of influence, although with Lai it would be more problematic. He is a British citizen living in Hong Kong, and, since Trump suspended the US fugitive surrender arrangement with the city on Aug 19, the transfer of wanted persons is no longer possible. Lai could, however, return to the US voluntarily, although, if Biden wins, it is unlikely that he would again receive a red-carpet welcome.
The author is a senior counsel, law professor and criminal justice analyst, and was previously the director of public prosecutions of the Hong Kong SAR.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
