Michael Pillsbury, an informal adviser to President Donald Trump on China trade policy, “says he was given information on Hunter Biden’s business dealings during a visit to Beijing but can’t seem to keep his story straight.”

The DailyBeast reported that “last week despite already facing an impeachment inquiry for pressuring the Ukrainian president to investigate a 2020 political rival, Trump publicly called for China to open an investigation into the Bidens. It was later reported that the president mentioned Biden in an earlier call with the Chinese president, reportedly promising to stay quiet on the Hong Kong protests as trade talks progressed.”

Law&Crime noted Financial Times (FT) as reporting that “Pillsbury told reporter Demetri Sevastopulo: “I got a quite a bit of background on Hunter Biden from the Chinese.” Pillsbury’s intelligence-gathering on the son of the president’s political rival occurred during the same week Trump said: “China should start an investigation into the Bidens.” Law&Crime reported that after stating he got background info on Hunter Biden from china Pillsbury went on air and narrated a falsehood about it. Law&Crime revisits this backpedaling.

Andrew Bates, a spokesperson for Mr Biden told FT that “now we have yet another ‘unofficial’ China envoy seeking dirt with which to smear the Biden family in the second foreign country that Trump publicly begged to bail out his re-election campaign”.