China: what Hunter’s deals actually paid

BHR Partners was an investment manager set up in 2013 by Chinese investors and Hunter’s Rosemont Seneca partners. In December 2013 Hunter flew to Beijing on Air Force Two with his father and introduced him to his partner Jonathan Li. Trump later claimed Hunter left China with $1.5 billion. [1][3]

That figure was the fund’s fundraising target, money that would belong to investors. Bloomberg reported that Hunter took no equity at first and bought a 10% stake in BHR’s management company in 2017, after his father left office, for about $420,000. The Senate Republican report raised national-security concerns about some BHR deals, including the purchase of the U.S. auto-parts maker Henniges with a Chinese state-linked partner. [2][3]

CEFC China Energy was a fast-growing Shanghai conglomerate run by Ye Jianming, who cultivated political figures abroad. Hunter met him in Miami in February 2017 and received a diamond from him, which he testified he gave to his uncle James. [5]

Bank records subpoenaed by House Republicans show that on 1 March 2017, State Energy HK, a company linked to CEFC, wired $3 million to Robinson Walker LLC, the company of Hunter’s associate Rob Walker. Over the next three months about $1.065 million went on to accounts tied to Hunter, James Biden, Hallie Biden and an unidentified “Biden.” [1][2]

In August 2017 another CEFC-linked company sent $5 million to Hudson West III, a joint venture between Hunter and CEFC, part of which reached James Biden’s company. That November Patrick Ho, who ran a CEFC-funded group in New York, was arrested for bribing officials in Chad and Uganda; he was sentenced in 2019 to three years. In early 2018 Chinese authorities detained Ye for suspected economic crimes, and a Shanghai government agency took over CEFC. No Biden was charged over CEFC. [3][4][6][7]

In September 2025 the Justice Department’s inspector general published a report on Charles McGonigal, a senior FBI counterintelligence official who later went to prison for working for a sanctioned Russian oligarch. It found he had leaked sensitive information related to the CEFC investigation. [1]

The report also says that in November 2017, after Ho’s arrest, James Biden asked retired Secret Service agents to find out whether Ho had a warrant against him. They passed back that a check came up empty, with the warning that a sealed warrant might not show. James has said he was doing routine due diligence on a business contact. [1][2][3]