James, 74, insisted that he didn’t believe the company, CEFC China Energy, was controlled by Beijing — claiming that “I just misspoke” when telling the IRS in a 2022 interview that first son Hunter Biden, who was partnering with his uncle, had described CEFC chairman Ye Jianming as a “protégé” of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“Where did you believe the source of the money that was going into [Hunter Biden’s company] Owasco, prior to being sent to you, was coming from?” an investigator asked James during the Feb. 21 interview.
“CEFC,” James conceded — following an extended back-and-forth in which the first brother’s attorney Paul Fishman tried to argue that “money’s fungible” before being reminded by a House staffer that James “did not have sufficient funds” to make the $40,000 alleged loan repayment on his own, “so it is traceable.”
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