LAS VEGAS, Nevada — Former President Donald Trump ripped current President Joe Biden for selling nearly a million barrels of oil from the United States Strategic Petroleum Reserve to a Chinese company linked to his son Hunter Biden, calling the move “terrible” in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News here on Friday night.
The revelation that Biden sold oil from the official United States reserves to foreign countries, “one of which is China,” as Trump noted in the interview, rocked the news last week, leading several Republicans to demand an investigation into what happened. Trump had rebuilt the supply in the United States reserves for the first time in decades, and then Biden, during a shortage of oil where the price is at or near record highs, turned around and sold it foreign countries, something Trump called “incredible.”
“I think the whole thing is incredible,” Trump told Breitbart News. “I built up the reserves—75 million barrels of oil. We filled it up. It’s the first time in decades that that was loaded up to the top. We did it when oil was very cheap. I said this would be the time. I said ‘tell me about the reserves,’ and they told me and in about two seconds we made a big order for very little money. Now it’s being given away to China and other countries. I think it’s terrible.”
Asked if it is a scandal worthy of investigation, Trump said he consider it “certainly strange” that Biden would give American oil from the nation’s reserves to China.
“I don’t know. It’s certainly strange to be giving to, of all countries, China,” Trump said. “Now, they’re getting a lot of oil from Iran and other places. They should have no shortage. When I was president, I didn’t allow China to buy from Iran and Iran was willing to make a deal. They would have had a deal within one week after the election—within a week I would have had a deal with Iran. It’s so sad what’s happened to our country in so many different ways.”
While as of yet it is unclear if Biden or his family members, such as his son Hunter Biden, personally profited from this sale, Trump said that if that happened it would be “inconceivable,” but that the mere fact that Biden even sold U.S. oil to a Chinese company to begin with is bad enough. Trump also said Biden policies are likely to cause the price of gas to continue to increase beyond the record highs hit this summer, predicting “much higher” gas prices soon.
“It would be inconceivable that that could happen but so is even the thought of China getting millions of barrels of oil from us and we’re the ones with the shortage,” Trump said. “They don’t have a shortage, because they’re buying so much from Iran and other countries. They’re buying from Russia, by the way, and Russia is doing better than ever. They’re making a fortune over and above the cost of the war and the war is what drove the price up in terms of the barrels. Nobody can believe this would happen. If you look at everything since the election, the Russia-Ukraine war would have never happened, inflation would have never happened. We had the cost per gallon down to $1.87. Now it’s way over $5. I think it’s going to go much higher, too.”
This interview with Trump comes in the wake of Biden selling 950,000 barrels of oil, per a Department of Energy announcement earlier this year, to Unipec—the trading arm of the Chinese Communist Party-controlled Sinopec. In 2015, a private equity firm that Hunter Biden founded bought a $1.7 billion stake in Sinopec Marketing.
Xu Congjun/VCG via Getty Images; Nati Harnik/AP Photo; BNN
The ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Rep. James Comer (R-KY), told Breitbart News last week that the matter is now being formally investigated. Should the GOP retake the House majority as expected in November’s midterm elections, this investigation will likely intensify, but Comer is already calling for testimony and document production from key Biden Administration officials on this deal.
House Oversight and Reform Committee Ranking Member James Comer (R-KY) speaks during a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on May 12, 2021. (Jonathan Ernst-Pool/Getty Images)
“From day one, the Biden Administration has waged a war against America’s energy producers. It started with the cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline and has continued with their push to implement radical Green New Deal policies. Their recent decision to remove oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve didn’t just fail to lower high gas prices, it has now left Americans vulnerable to unstable oil markets created by this administration,” Comer told Breitbart News.
“The Department of Energy is operating behind closed doors and has left Americans in the dark. Under no circumstances should President Biden be providing our oil reserves to hostile foreign adversaries or Chinese firms linked to Hunter Biden,” Comer continued. “It’s critical for Energy Secretary Granholm to stop dodging our Congressional inquiries and testify before the Oversight Committee.”