Unredacted Hunter Biden search warrants detail payments linked to Ukraine and China

Newly-unredacted IRS and FBI search warrants tied to the federal investigation into Hunter Biden provide new details on the information that investigators had in their possession about President Joe Biden’s son’s business deals linked to Ukraine, China and elsewhere.

The multiple search warrant applications were released, with only some redactions remaining, late Tuesday following an agreement between Hunter Biden’s legal team and the Justice Department. 

The search warrants detail the knowledge that federal investigators had years ago related to lucrative payments Hunter Biden had received from Ukrainian gas giant Burisma, since-defunct Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC, Romanian businessmen, and more – sometimes including when Joe Biden was still vice president.

“The government has conferred with subject-matter experts within the Department of Justice and counsel for Mr. Biden. The parties agree the search warrant applications and affidavits at issue may be unsealed with limited redactions,” Shannon Hanson, the acting U.S. attorney for Delaware, said in a Tuesday court filing. She added that “the government proposes, and counsel for Mr. Biden does not object to, limited redactions to protect specific privacy and grand jury secrecy interests.”

The two IRS whistleblowers who shed light on what they considered failures to properly investigate Hunter Biden – and who were allegedly retaliated against as a result – received promotions from the Trump administration in March. IRS supervisory special agent Gary Shapley and IRS special agent Joseph Ziegler are now serving as senior advisers to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Shapley was also reportedly selected to be the acting IRS Commissioner last week, prior to him reportedly being replaced in that role shortly thereafter.

The whistle-blowers were harshly critical of then-special counsel David Weiss’s handling of the Hunter Biden investigation, arguing he had slow-walked the case. Shapley had also told congressional investigators in 2023 that Hanson was a key part of Weiss’s team and that she was present at a key meeting where Weiss said he was limited in his criminal charging authority.

Ziegler himself filed the August 2019 search warrant application for Hunter Biden’s Apple accounts, the new documents reveal. The application was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware and was approved by a judge.

The application said that, in 2014, Hunter Biden began receiving roughly $83,333.33 per month from Burisma. The payments were sent to an account held by Rosemont Seneca Bohai (RSB) – a partnership in which Devon Archer held a 99% interest – and the RSB account at Morgan Stanley would receive the payments from a Burisma account, then send them to accounts held by Hunter Biden.

The IRS agent’s application said that, in 2014, $1,538,505 was sent from Burisma to the RSB account, then the RSB account sent $315,000 to Hunter Biden’s accounts.

Ziegler wrote that, in 2015, $83,333.33 per month was sent from Burisma to an RSB Stanley Morgan account and an RSB Bank of New York Mellon account, totaling $1,941,131 in payments. The memo line for payments was “consulting services” and “Monthly Director Fee” – with the RSB account then sending $386,979 to Hunter Biden’s accounts.

The IRS agent said that in 2016 Burisma accounts began sending $83,333.33 in monthly payments to Hunter Biden’s company – Owasco – where the payments were received in a Wells Fargo account. That year, Hunter Biden received nine payments of $833,333.33 from Burisma and three additional payments of $83,731, $84,922, and $83,293 – for a total of $1,002,017.

Ziegler wrote that in 2016, the amount of $551,005 was also sent from a Bank of America account in the name of Robinson Walker LLC to Hunter Biden’s Owasco Wells Fargo account. 

Ziegler said the money appeared to originate as $2,213,546 from Bladon Enterprises Limited (owned by Romanian businessman Gabriel Popoviciu) with the money then divided up among Hunter Biden, business associate Rob Walker and an account held in Abu Dhabi in the name of European Energy and Infrastructure. The foreign company was associated with James Gilliar, who was also a Hunter Biden business partner and the author of the infamous “Big Guy” email.

The IRS agent said that in 2017 Burisma sent Hunter Biden’s Owasco account $630,556. Ziegler wrote that the Owasco Wells Fargo account also received $2,761,959 in other payments, including $1,445,387 held in the name of Hudson West III at Cathay Bank. 

Ziegler also said that CEFC official Gongwen Dong originally owned Hudson West III, with Gongwen also reportedly the director of the U.S.-based CEFC Infrastructure. Ziegler said that in August 2017 DBS Bank Hong Kong Limited funded a $5 million loan into the Hudson West III account and wrote that Cathay Bank said that at some point ownership of the Hudson West III account transferred from Dong to companies belonging to Hunter Biden and his Chinese-American business associate Mervyn Yan.

Ziegler also wrote that Hunter Biden received $100,000 from CEFC Infrastructure.

Additionally, Hunter Biden’s Owasco account received $666,572 from an LLC called Skaneatles, with Ziegler saying that Hunter Biden was a 75% owner of the LLC at the time, while business partner Eric Schwerin was a 25% owner.

President Biden’s son also received another $550,000 from Robinson Walker that year.

The IRS agent said that in 2018 there were $491,939 in payments made from Burisma to Hunter Biden’s Owasco.

The Owasco Wells Fargo account also received $2,731,494 in other payments, Ziegler said, including $2,187,494 from the Hudson West III Cathay Bank account.

The IRS agent detailed another $544,000 bank transfer “made possible by” a $1 million wire received from Hudson West III on March 22, 2018. Ziegler said the memo line for the payment was “Dr. Patrick Ho Chi Ping Representation” and that Hunter Biden “never entered an appearance on behalf of Ho in the criminal action.”

Hunter Biden and his associated businesses are also believed to have received at least $5 million in payments from Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC in 2017 and 2018, and Ye deputy Patrick Ho also agreed to pay Hunter Biden a $1 million retainer. Hunter referred to Ho as “the f***ing spy chief of China” in a May 11, 2018, voice recording.

Ho was sentenced to three years in prison in March 2019 for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. He was deported to Hong Kong in June 2021 after serving his sentence.

In seeking access to Hunter Biden’s Apple account, Ziegler said that records showed Biden had exchanged emails with Burisma adviser Vadym Pozharskyi and Burisma board of directors Chairman Alan Apter, as well as with Dong and Yan.

During an October 2020 debate with President Donald Trump, then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden incorrectly claimed that his son never made money from China, despite being aware of Hunter Biden’s dealings with CEFC.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Gop Rep. James Comer had revealed Biden family financial details in March 2023 after he obtained them through a subpoena of Hunter Biden associate Rob Walker’s financial records at Bank of America. Comer revealed that “from 2015 through 2017, Biden family members and their companies received over $1.3 million in payments” from accounts tied to Walker.

Comer said more than $1 million was sent in incremental payments to Hunter Biden, his uncle and Joe’s brother James Biden, and Hallie Biden, the widow of the president’s deceased son, Beau Biden, with whom Hunter was having a romantic relationship in 2017 following his brother’s death, shortly after Walker received a $3 million wire from a Chinese company called State Energy HK.

State Energy HK was “affiliated” with CEFC “at the time of the transfers,” according to a report issued by Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson in 2020. State Energy HK detailed a 2017 transaction with CEFC in a business report.

Comer released further financial records from his investigation into “the Biden family’s influence-peddling and business schemes” in May 2023 by highlighting bank records related to Hunter Biden-linked business deals in Romania and China. 

The ​​report argued the bank records showed that “the Biden family, their business associates, and their companies received over $10 million” from companies belonging to foreign nationals.

The GOP report in 2023 also provided “additional information about the Biden family’s troubling receipt of payments from China, particularly the individual Ye Jianming and his company, CEFC, to show what was from 2015 to 2018 a growing interest by people closely tied to the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] in cultivating a relationship with the Biden family.”

Shortly before the March 2017 Chinese wires from State Energy HK occurred, Ye, the now-former CEFC leader, met with Hunter Biden on Feb. 14, 2017, in Miami. It was there that Ye reportedly gifted Biden with a 3.16-carat diamond allegedly valued at $80,000.

Comer wrote in 2023 that CEFC deputy Dong formed CEFC Infrastructure in Delaware in May 2017 and that Hudson West V, a company directed by Dong that received a $24 million wire from Ye and formed a partnership with Hunter Biden, was the sole equity member of CEFC. 

A week later, the memo said Hudson West V “assigned 100 percent of its interest” to the Chinese company Shanghai Huaxin Group. Shanghai Huaxin “funded the CEFC Infrastructure bank account with a significant injection of $10 million from China” in June 2017, Comer said, and then CEFC Infrastructure wired $100,000 to Hunter Biden’s Owasco P.C. on Aug. 4, 2017.

The GOP report in 2023 also said that prior to the wire from State Energy HK, Walker and Hunter Biden associate James Gilliar, as well as Hunter Biden and Hallie Biden, “received payments from a Romanian source, and many of the payments were made while Joe Biden was Vice President and working directly on the U.S.’s official policy in Romania.”

The memo argued that actions in Romania taken by the Biden family and its associates “bear clear indicia of a scheme to peddle influence” from 2015 to 2017, arguing that “while Vice President Biden lectured Romania on corruption and ethics, Hunter Biden received – through Walker – over a million dollars from a company controlled by a Romanian individual accused of corruption (Gabriel Popoviciu).”

Hunter Biden initially reached a plea agreement with then-special counsel David Weiss on federal charges related to tax crimes and the illegal purchase of a handgun in what congressional Republicans dubbed a “sweetheart deal” in June 2023. The deal collapsed under scrutiny by a federal judge the next month, in part to the revelations made by the IRS whistleblowers.

After the deal collapsed, Biden was convicted by a Delaware jury on gun charges in June, then pleaded guilty to tax charges in California in September 2024. 

He was found guilty of making a false statement on his gun application and being in possession of a firearm while being an illegal drug user. Biden then pled guilty to what the DOJ described as “a four-year scheme in which he chose not to pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes he owed.”

Ziegler also filed a now-released December 2019 application for a search warrant for Hunter Biden’s MacBook Pro. This was also filed in the Delaware federal court and signed off on by a judge.

The IRS agent said that FBI special agents had interviewed “Confidential Witness #1” in early November 2019 “following a tip provided to law enforcement.” The confidential witness – identifiable as John Paul Mac Isaac – was “the owner of a computer store” in Wilmington, Delaware.

Ziegler said the FBI interview revealed that Biden brought the laptop to the computer repair shop on April 12, 2019. Mac Isaac said he made multiple attempts to contact Biden after repairs were completed in April 2019. He told the FBI he became aware of Biden’s “connection to the country of Ukraine” following media reports in late July 2019, and Mac Isaac soon viewed “hundreds” of Hunter Biden’s emails.

The IRS agent said the FBI came into possession of the laptop and its external hard drive following a December 9, 2019, grand jury subpoena.

Ziegler also filed a now-unredacted application for a search warrant for Hunter Biden’s Apple iCloud backups in July 2020. The federal judge again signed off.

The IRS agent said that investigators had unearthed thousands of WhatsApp messages, thousands of iMessage messages, and hundreds of WeChat messages from Hunter Biden, including a WeChat message found between him and Dong and WeChat messages between Hunter Biden business associates Eric Schwerin and Katie Dodge about the Hunter Biden-linked Bohai Harvest RST Chinese investment firm.

Kevin Morris, a close Hunter Biden confidante who loaned him millions of dollars, appeared to have transferred ownership of Skaneateles sometime in 2023. Skaneateles was an LLC started by Hunter Biden through which he held his 10% share in Bohai Harvest RST (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund Management Company, or BHR, according to the company’s business records.

Comer said in June 2023 that “the circumstances surrounding Biden’s transfer of his interest in a Chinese-backed investment fund are suspicious.”

The Chinese firm BHR had invested in a number of controversial Chinese companies that have been sanctioned by the U.S., and it teamed up with a Chinese defense company that helped build up the Russian military and has been tied to the Russian war effort in Ukraine.

Another newly-released application for a search warrant for Hunter Biden’s Apple iCloud account and its cloud backup was filed in December 2023 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware. It was filed by a yet-redacted FBI special agent and signed off on by a federal magistrate judge.

This FBI filing said that an August 2019 search warrant had resulted in the contents of Biden’s Apple iCloud account and its backup data being provided to the FBI in September 2019. The FBI agent also said that a July 2020 warrant had allowed the MacBook Pro and its external hard drive to be searched for evidence of tax crimes.

The IRS whistleblowers have revealed how their investigation into Hunter Biden’s dealings with CEFC China Energy, a since-defunct Chinese energy conglomerate, appeared to be blocked by higher-ups. Shapley testified that “after an electronic search warrant on Biden’s Apple iCloud led us to WhatsApp messages with several CEFC China Energy executives where he claimed to be sitting and discussing business with his father, Joe Biden, we sought permission to follow up on the information in the messages” – but “prosecutors would not allow it.”

President Joe Biden pardoned his son in December of 2024.

Fifty-one former intelligence officials released an October 2020 letter attempting to discredit New York Post stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop, with the ex-spies arguing that the Russians were involved with the laptop. It was later revealed that former acting CIA Director Michael Morell wrote the laptop letter after being “prompted” by Biden campaign staffer and future Secretary of State Antony Blinken to do so, and that the debunked laptop letter was written to give Joe Biden a “talking point” in his debate with Trump ahead of the November 2020 election.

The IRS whistleblowers also previously revealed that the FBI verified the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop by November 2019 – nearly a year before the laptop emerged and the infamous laptop letter was written.

Just the News revealed this month that Jonathan Buma, an arrested FBI agent who had publicly alleged Trump ally Rudy Giuliani may have been compromised by Russia and who had denied the FBI had mishandled its investigation of Hunter Biden, is now being represented by a law firm that defended Joe Biden’s son.