A government watchdog wants the US Attorney investigating Hunter Biden in Delaware to look into tens of millions of dollars in anonymous Chinese donations to the University of Pennsylvania, where a research center named for his father, President Biden, is located.
Public records show that the Ivy League school received $54.6 million in donations from China between 2014 and June 2019, including $23.1 million from anonymous gifts that began in 2016.
As soon as Penn announced in February 2017 that it would be establishing the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, the anonymous donations poured in. In addition to serving as the center’s director, Joe Biden had also been given a professorship at the university where he had served as vice president.
Located in Washington, DC, the center opened its doors in February of this year. As Biden’s Secretary of State, Antony Blinken previously ran the company as its managing director. That year, the Ivy League school received $15.8 million in anonymous Chinese gifts, with one donation in May 2018 totaling $14.5 million alone.
According to the National Legal and Policy Center, a watchdog group from Virginia, Hunter Biden’s business interests in China may be a factor in the recent surge in donations.
As part of the federal tax investigation of Hunter Biden, the group last week asked US Attorney David Weiss to investigate the school’s Chinese donations. “We’ve asked … Weiss to pursue the larger network of individuals and institutions who benefited from millions doled out by foreign interests connected to Hunter Biden’s work in China and Ukraine,” said Tom Anderson, director of the NLPC’s Government Integrity Project.
One of Hunter Biden’s companies, CEFC China Energy Co, wanted to lobby US politicians but refused to register under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA), required of all foreign lobbyists, according to the watchdog’s 12-page complaint. The text was found on Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop in 2017.
“We don’t want to have to register as foreign agents under the FCPA [sic] which … is much more expansive than people who should know choose not to know,” reads May 1, 2017, text sent from Hunter Biden to his former business partner Tony Bobulinski.
Unknown Chinese funds did not make it to the Penn Center, according to a university spokesman. “The Penn Biden Center has never solicited or received any gifts from any Chinese or other foreign entity. In fact, the University has never solicited any gifts for the Center,” Stephen MacCarthy said.
MacCarthy argued that the center had received a total of $1,100 in three unrequested gifts from two donors since 2017, but that both donors were American citizens. For confidential reasons, it is not possible for him to reveal who these donors are or how the massive, unidentified Chinese funds were used at the school.
After Biden was elected president in 2020, the center said it would operate “completely independent of the Biden administration.”
Many other Ivy League schools have benefited from Chinese philanthropy, according to public records. Harvard received $75 million between 2014 and 2019, while Yale reaped $43.5 million. A federal investigation into the Biden crime family, Harvard and Yale’s compliance with foreign-currency reporting requirements will begin in 2020.