Patrick Ho previously served as the head of an NGO backed by CEFC China Energy, a now-defunct firm that has come under scrutiny over alleged dealings with the Biden family.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer on Tuesday wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland seeking materials related to the investigation into Patrick Ho, an associate of first son Hunter Biden who was convicted of bribery in 2019.
Ho previously served as the head of an NGO backed by CEFC China Energy, a now-defunct firm that has come under scrutiny over alleged dealings with the Biden family.
“On December 5, 2018, Mr. Ho was convicted in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations, money laundering, and conspiracy for paying millions of dollars in bribes to top government officials in Chad and Uganda to secure oil rights for CEFC China Energy (CEFC),” the pair wrote to Garland. “At the time, Mr. Ho was the head of a U.S.-based non-governmental organization funded by CEFC. On March 25, 2019, the federal court sentenced Mr. Ho to three years in prison and fined him $400,000. On June 8, 2020, Mr. Ho was released from prison and deported to Hong Kong. The last activity in Mr. Ho’s case appears to have occurred on June 28, 2021, when the U.S. Supreme Court declined Mr. Ho’s request to hear his appeal.”
File: Comer, Jordan letter to Garland
“Information obtained by the Committees indicate that prosecutors sought to keep the Biden name out of Mr. Ho’s trial. First, as the Oversight Committee previously noted, prosecutors in Mr. Ho’s case seemingly redacted Hunter Biden’s name from evidence used at trial. During Mr. Ho’s trial, former president of the United Nations General Assembly Vuk Jeremic testified that following his term as president, he worked as a consultant for CEFC, which involved ‘opening doors’ for CEFC by ‘introducing company executives to the business or political leadership of various countries,'” they continued. “As part of this work, in December 2015, Mr. Jeremic ‘attempted to introduce Chairman Ye and CEFC to Hunter Biden and his associates.'”
“During the trial, a prosecutor requested that the judge redact from an email between Ho and Jeremic that DOJ intended to introduce into evidence the name of ‘an individual that Mr. Jeremic was willing to bring to a dinner with the chairman Mr. Ye,'” Jordan and Comer asserted that the unnamed individual was likely Hunter Biden.
By Ben Whedon
