Trump says China's Xi should start investigating the Bidens

WASHINGTON (BLOOMBERG) - President Donald Trump said on Thursday (Oct 3) that China's Xi Jinping should consider investigating Joe Biden and his son after again calling on Ukraine's president to re-open an investigation into one of his top political rivals.

"China should start an investigation into the Bidens," Trump told reporters as he left the White House. "Because what happened in China was just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine."

Trump's remarks came after he reiterated his call for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to start an investigation of the Bidens.

Trump's allegation that Joe Biden, as vice-president, tried to shield his son Hunter from a Ukrainian investigation of a company that employed him, has been discredited.

The US House has begun an inquiry into impeaching Trump over his conduct in a July 25 telephone call with Zelenskiy. After freezing military aid to Ukraine, which is battling a Russia-backed insurgency, the US president asked Zelenskiy to investigate Biden, and encouraged him to work on the matter with his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and Attorney-General William Barr.

"I would say that President Zelenskiy, if it were me, I would recommend that they start an investigation into the Bidens," Trump said on Thursday. "Because nobody has any doubts that they weren't crooked."

Biden's campaign dismissed Trump's remarks as without merit.

"Donald Trump is flailing and melting down on national television, desperately clutching for conspiracy theories that have been debunked and dismissed by independent, credible news organisations," said Biden deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield in a statement. "It could not be more transparent: Donald Trump is terrified that Joe Biden will beat him like a drum."

On China, Trump suggested that the Bidens may be the reason Beijing "has such a sweetheart deal, that for so many years they've been ripping off our country."

Trump did not elaborate, but he often says China is "ripping off" the US in trade - the predicate for his ongoing trade war with Beijing.

Speaking to the media in September, Trump alluded to his suspicions about Biden and China: "When Biden's son walks out of China with US$1.5 billion in a fund, and the biggest funds in the world can't get money out of China, and he's there for one quick meeting and he flies in on Air Force Two, I think that's a horrible thing."

Implicit in Trump's statements is that Joe Biden used his position to encourage Chinese officials to benefit his son's business dealings involving a private-equity venture in the country.

Not only has no evidence emerged of the vice-president's intervention, but it's unclear whether Hunter Biden derived any financial benefit from the venture in the first place.

Trump's assertions about China appear to originate from a 2018 book, Secret Empires, by the conservative author Peter Schweizer.

The book highlights how then-vice president Biden took his son on a diplomatic trip to China in December 2013, and that around the same time, major Chinese companies formed a private-equity venture with which Hunter Biden was affiliated.

The private-equity firm, known as Bohai Harvest RST, originally planned to raise US$1 billion and later aimed for US$1.5 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported in 2014. This appears to be the amount of money the firm planned to invest on behalf of clients, not the value of the firm itself.

Hunter Biden was on the board of BHR from the outset, but he did not own an equity stake in the company until October 2017, after his father had left office, George Mesires, a lawyer for Hunter Biden, told Politifact.

Mesires said Hunter Biden's capital commitment in the venture is US$420,000 and he has not received any earnings from the investment. He also said Hunter Biden was not paid for his service as a board member.

Corporate records retrieved in China in May showed BHR had paid-in capital of about US$4 million.