Key points:
“Hunter Biden received a $3.5 million wire transfer from Elena Baturina, the wife of the former mayor of Moscow.” But the two pages in the report that deal with this transaction are considerably more nuanced, never saying outright that Hunter Biden received this money and making no claim that any laws were broken.
The GOP report itself does not provide evidence to back up the claim that became a talking point — and our reporting has unearthed the best explanation about what really happened. It’s a complicated story, involving a web of corporate entities, that eventually leads to the purchase of millions of dollars worth of real estate in Brooklyn by the Russian billionaire. We found no evidence that Hunter Biden was part of those transactions.
Hunter Biden’s laptop does not contain significant evidence of direct interaction between Hunter Biden and Baturina, according to a review of emails that have been verified by experts working with The Washington Post as well as emails that the experts were unable to verify.
Besides the allegation about Hunter Biden, the GOP report made other claims about payments from Baturina to Rosemont Seneca Thornton. But that part of the report showed sloppiness in the reporting and calls into question the thoroughness of the investigation. The report critically misidentified the recipient, mixing up two entities with virtually the same names.
Link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/08/unraveling-tale-hunter-biden-35-million-russia/