U.S. President Joe Biden’s second son, John Hunt, has been repeatedly exposed as having business dealings with China, posing a conflict of interest. The U.S. news site Just the News reported Thursday (22) that Hunter, while his father was vice president, planned to build a SeaWorld theme park in China and lobbied for Chinese investment in a U.S. NBA arena, involving the Chinese state-owned China Development Bank The deal included Chinese state-owned China Development Bank, former U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke and former Biden staffer Francis Person.
The report cited emails and memos showing that Hunter asked two of his business partners to contact Payson in July 2015, saying they were working on a “China business” and then emailed one of them, Devon Archer, saying Payson had worked closely with his father for eight years. Payson replied to Hunter and the others on the same day, bragging that he was part of a China-based investment company called Sinovel and had a high-level network in China, and that he had just finished a meeting with Sinovel director Gary Locke.
When Archer replied to Payson, he suggested that Rosemont Capital, which he co-founded with former Secretary of State John Kerry’s adopted son, was in contact with Ocean World’s largest investor, Blackstone. Payson responded a few days later that he was willing to work with Rosemont Capital, and later revealed that Sinovel was backed by the National Development Bank. At the same time, Payson also pitched another China-related project to Hunt and others, a major sports stadium in Seattle proposed by Gary Locke.
The terms offered by Sinovel and China Development Bank were attractive, as they would provide 100 percent of the funding and implementation of the entire project, as well as fully fund the development of the park’s surrounding area, while SeaWorld would only provide branding, park design, management and technical support; both projects were ultimately dead in the water.
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