First son Hunter Biden was at father Joe’s Wilmington, Del., home the same day he used the future president as leverage in a text message sent to a Chinese business associate to close a deal, photos found on his abandoned laptop show.
Hunter posed in four pictures with a pair of female family members in his dad’s 1967 Corvette Stingray on the evening of July 30, 2017, according to metadata obtained by conservative nonprofit group Marco Polo and first reported by the Washington Free Beacon.
Hours before, Hunter sent a threatening WhatsApp message to Harvest Fund Management director Henry Zhao, saying he was “sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled.”
“Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight,” the now-53-year-old said. “And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction.”
IRS supervisory agent Gary Shapley revealed the WhatsApp exchange to the House Ways and Means Committee last month and it was made public Thursday.
Shapley said IRS investigators looking into the first son’s finances obtained the message from the first son’s iCloud via an August 2020 search warrant.
Zhao, a Chinese Communist Party official, ended up paying $100,000 to Hunter’s firm Owasco P.C., Shapley and a second anonymous IRS investigator told the House panel.
The message and the photos cast fresh doubt upon President Biden’s repeated claims that he never spoke with his son about his overseas business dealings.
Hunter’s relationship with Zhao dates back to May 2014, when his father was vice president.
The Chinese associate expressed interest that month in launching a company with Rosemont Seneca, the first son’s investment firm, according to laptop emails.
The IRS whistleblowers said the Justice Department denied their requests to look further into Hunter’s texts or obtain their location data, with some federal prosecutors suggesting the first son may have been lying about his father being present when he sent the text to Zhao.
Delaware US Attorney David Weiss, who led the Hunter Biden probe, also told Shapley during an October 2022 meeting that he “was not the deciding person on whether charges are filed” against the first son, according to a memo drafted by the IRS investigator afterward.
The memo contradicts sworn testimony from Attorney General Merrick Garland that the prosecutor had been given “full authority.”
Justice Department spokesperson insisted to The Post Friday that Weiss “has full authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges as he deems appropriate. He needs no further approval to do so.”
The rep did not respond to a follow-up question about whether the department believed the whistleblowers had perjured themselves.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the president’s whereabouts on July 30, 2017.
Hunter is also known to have had access to the Wilmington home’s garage, where President Biden improperly kept classified documents.
Hunter, Zhao and first brother James Biden all worked with Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC Energy, which paid Hunter and James $4.8 million from between 2017 and 2018, according to laptop records confirmed by the Washington Post.
In May 2017, an email from Hunter’s laptop also mentioned a 10% stake held by Hunter for Joe Biden, referred to as the “big guy,” and another document in October of that year listed the president as a participant on a phone call concerning CEFC trying to purchase a US natural gas company.