Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) demanded President Joe Biden disclose the “mystery source” who paid him and his wife about $10 million in 2017, the year he left the vice presidency.
In the wake of Joe Biden allegedly accepting a $5 million bribe from the founder of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky — who allegedly kept 17 audio recordings of his conversations with Joe and Hunter Biden as an “insurance policy” — Cruz raised concerns about Joe and Jill Biden’s entities that raked in millions in 2017.
“You’re looking at a tax return that has $10 million in cash that came from a mystery source,” Cruz said on his podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
He continued:
Now let’s look at the timing here. The whistleblower says when he was vice president, a senior executive at Burisma offered him $5 million cash personally in order to make a corrupt deal and make official decisions for Burisma. The year he leaves the vice presidency in 2017, he reported over $10 million of income in two corporations that he and his wife set up, and we know nothing, zero whatsoever about the source of that income.
Cruz said the House should demand transparency from Joe Biden about who exactly paid the entities.
“You know what the House of Representatives oughta force him to do — you know what anyone who gives a damn about integrity in government should say? ‘We need the tax returns of CelticCapri Corp and GiaCoppa Corp,’” Cruz said. “Because, you know, what if half of that $10 million is the $5 million payment for Burisma for the bribe?”
“Joe Biden better start sizing up for an orange jumpsuit. Because, as he rightly said, ‘Where’s the money?’ If that’s where the money is, then he’s guilty of a serious felony,” Cruz continued. “We have utterly no idea where that $10 million came from.”
In addition, Cruz, who authored a number of books, explained how Biden’s book deal and speaking engagements likely do not account for the $10 million in 2017:
So, let’s take Joe’s numbers. He’s claiming that Joe netted $12.2 million for a book deal. His book deal sold about 300,000 copies. Now, the $12 million, $4.2 million of that is allegedly from speaking, and I can believe that he probably got pretty good speaking fees, that that’s plausible. That means he’s claiming $8 million of income came from book royalties.
Now let’s do some math. His book had a retail price of $27 for hardcover, $18 for paperback. If you assume a reasonable mix of sales, the average price was $23. On 300,000 books sold, the gross revenue everyone makes is just under $7 million. What Joe is alleging is they paid him $8 million to generate $7 million. The book publisher lost a million dollars and got no money for printing the book. Typically, an author, if you were just receiving a royalty, would have received about 12%. A typical blended royalty, you’d get about 15 percent. For hardcover, about 7.5 percent for paperback is typical. If Joe was receiving 12 percent of $7 million, he would have yielded about $800,000. He’s claiming he got $8 million.
That math doesn’t add up.
Cruz also raised concerns about why the Biden family would open a multitude of shell companies while Joe Biden was a public official:
On the face of it, it screams that they’re trying to conceal what’s happening with those shell companies. You know, who does that? Drug dealers do that; the mafia does that; criminals do that. Now, maybe if you’re like a billionaire tycoon, you might do that. If you’re like developing, you know, projects all over the country, maybe you do that. But Joe Biden isn’t doing any of that. He was vice president of the United States. He doesn’t know anything about business. Why on earth does he need 20 shell companies if it’s not to hide and shield the income?
Ted Cruz joins fellow Republican lawmakers who demanded transparency from Joe Biden. On Wednesday, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ), and Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) exclusively told Breitbart News Joe Biden must come clean about his entity in the wake of his alleged link to a $5 million Ukrainian “bribery” scheme.
Johnson, a co-author of the 2020 Senate report on the Bidens, said, “Biden should disclose, and every member of the press ought to hound him until he does.”
Mace said Joe Biden should produce unredacted bank records to provide transparency.
“If he’s serious about proving our allegations wrong, he should release his and his family’s unredacted bank records and show the American people where all this money is coming from. The FBI can’t protect him forever,” she said.
Crane told Breitbart News Joe Biden should come clean about the money in lieu of the alleged pay-for-pay scheme.
“The fact that there are credible claims signaling that a foreign national bribed the President of the United States with cash in exchange for influence over U.S. policy decisions is appalling,” he said. “The American people deserve to know who paid the Bidens and what exactly they were paid for.”
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
