Earlier this month U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz signaled that Republican lawmakers were planning a special probe of the Biden family’s business network, if the GOP retakes the House in November.
The Fort Walton Beach Republican told Breitbart News that the DEmocrats’ select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol spawned the idea. “I’m not suggesting we establish a select committee for political payback,” Gaetz said on Aug. 1, “but to look into very legitimate concerns about influence peddling and compromise and leverage that may exist today over the Biden family.”
Based on at least 16 known meetings President Joe Biden had with his son Hunter’s business contacts, including many while serving as vice president, Gaetz added that GOP lawmakers would look into schemes of “highly sophisticated influence peddling” that were “clearly running in a variety of countries.”
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Hunter’s dealings in China and Ukraine have been the most widely reported incidents. But recently the New York Post revealed, thanks to Hunter’s wayward laptop, another country is on the list: Romania.
Hunter “met with his father multiple times while working for a Romanian real estate tycoon accused of corruption — an effort that netted Joe Biden’s second son and associates ‘millions’ of dollars,” the Post reported, citing an unnamed whistleblower who was close to the deal.
Hunter in 2015, when Joe was still vice president, worked for Romanian businessman Gabriel Popoviciu. Romanian authorities accused Popoviciu of bribing a university official to buy a 550-acre plot of government-owned land at a drastically discounted price, The Daily Mail has reported. He hired Hunter, who in turn brought on board former FBI Director Louis Freeh, to manage what the Mail called an “extensive propaganda and persuasion campaign” to convince the public Popoviciu was innocent.
Part of Hunter’s plan involved using his connections to convince the then-U.S. ambassador in Romania to lean on prosecutors to help his client. The Post’s report from last week revealed that Hunter himself flew to Romania in 2016 to meet with the ambassador and Romanian officials, who declined a meeting. He was then scheduled to meet with Joe Binde just days after the trip.
The plan didn’t work, as Popoviciu was eventually convicted and sentenced to nine years in prison.
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The Post reported at one point that Hunter’s laptop included details of an exchange he had with Freeh during the case. Freeh suggested that U.S. officials believed that Popoviciu may be of use to them in other cases. Freeh told Hunter “I also spoke to Dad [Joe Biden] a few weeks ago and would like to explore with him some future work options. I believe that working together on these (and other legal) matters would be of value, fun, and rewarding,” the Post reported.
As Gaetz told Breitbart this month, Congress must “ensure we don’t have a compromised First Family. We need to understand how to influence in our government was bought and sold through Hunter Biden’s various entities.”
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Free Press.
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