OAN’s Abril Elfi
10:50 AM – Wednesday, July 19, 2023
Attorney General Merrick Garland and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) are being sued by America First Legal (AFL) for failing to require Hunter Biden to register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) during the Obama Administration, and for failing to publicly address the situation afterward.
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Although Garland is named as a defendant in the case, the AFL claims date back to the Obama White House era when Hunter Biden actively represented the Ukrainian energy business Burisma in negotiations. According to the lawsuit, it is a violation of FARA under 22 U.S.C. 611(b).
When dealing with the Obama White House and, specifically, the office of then-Vice President Joe Biden, Hunter Biden represented Burisma and its interests “as a foreign principal,” according to email evidence cited by the AFL in another lawsuit against the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
An “agent of a foreign principal” is described as “any person who acts as an agent, representative, employee, or servant, or any person who acts in any other capacity at the order, request, or under the direction or control, of a foreign principal or of a person any of whose activities are directly or indirectly supervised, directed, controlled, financed, or subsidized in whole or in major part by a foreign principal,” Under FARA.
According to an email from August 2, 2017, that was recovered from Hunter’s abandoned laptop, Ye Jianming, the chairman of the CEFC China Energy, a Chinese government-linked corporation, had offered a three-year consultancy deal between the company and Hunter Biden, under which Hunter would receive $10 million per year “for introductions alone.”
James Biden, the first brother, was also a party to the arrangement.
Justice Department last week charged U.S. citizen Gal Luft with violating FARA by allegedly accepting at least $700,000 from CEFC China Energy to his Maryland-based Institute for the Analysis of Global Security think tank in exchange for cohosting conferences and attempting to sway a 2016 Donald Trump campaign advisor. This sum is significantly less than the Biden family received.
The complaint claims that neither Garland compelled Hunter Biden to register as a foreign agent nor followed the law to grant him a FARA waiver. A DOJ probe is requested.
Violations of the FARA might result in severe criminal consequences.
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