Donald Trump’s China adviser Michael Pillsbury gathered information from Beijing on Hunter Biden, report says
- Michael Pillsbury told Financial Times in email that he had received ‘quite a bit of background on Hunter Biden from the Chinese’ last week in Beijing
- But on C-Span later that day, he denied making the comments or even been interviewed by the newspaper about the Biden issue
A China adviser to US President Donald Trump gathered information from Beijing officials regarding Hunter Biden, the Financial Times reported on Thursday, in the wake of Trump’s call for China to investigate the son of his political opponent Joe Biden.
Michael Pillsbury, who heads Chinese strategy at the Washington-based Hudson Institute, told the newspaper in an email that he had received “quite a bit of background on Hunter Biden from the Chinese” during a trip to Beijing last week.
But in an appearance on C-Span later on Thursday, Pillsbury denied that he had made the comments or even been interviewed by the Financial Times about the Hunter Biden matter, prompting the journalist who reported the story to post a screenshot of the email exchange to Twitter.
Pillsbury told the network that he had raised the Bidens with government officials he met during his trip to China, but said that they had refused to discuss the matter. “I’d never seen them so … secretive about an issue,” he said.
The China hawk serves as an outside adviser to Trump, who last year called him “the leading authority on China”.