Tony Bobulinski's history of litigation raises questions about credibility as star witness in GOP's plan to impeach Joe Biden
WASHINGTON, DC: After a tumultuous few days, House Republicans are gearing up to intensify their investigation into President Joe Biden's impeachment.
The GOP detectives behind this show hope to win back the public's confidence with testimony from Tony Bobulinski, a former acquaintance of Hunter Biden. They are reportedly planning to present Bobulinski as their first star fact witness at an upcoming hearing.
The hearing in October could prove to be a crucial test for the Republican inquiry into whether President Biden received financial benefits from or had a hand in his family's business ventures.
Bobulinski first made headlines after confirming the veracity of an email in which a Biden associate referred to Joe Biden as "the big guy"—a term that has since received unjustified attention and turned into a sort of right-wing mantra.
Conservatives have largely lauded his credibility but Democrats are just not having it.
The heroic mold that Republicans have cast for Bobulinsk is apparently overshadowed by his problematic history of litigation where he sued his own cancer-stricken father, stepmother, and their esteemed local children’s charity for $900,000.
Why did Tony Bobulinski sue his cancer-stricken father?
The dispute, which sparked months of family turmoil, saw Bobulinski claiming that his parents and the charity had defrauded him of $25,000, and allegedly threatened to take their home.
After his father Robert Bobulinski died, he continued the lawsuit for months, attempting to reach an agreement with his stepmother Alicia Fernandez Bobulinski, the charity, and his father's estate.
The Virginia records obtained by Daily Beast are rife with emails, texts, and other correspondence that portray Bobulinski as an erratic, self-serving manipulator with a violent temper.
The lawsuit, which was brought by Tony in Virginia Beach Circuit Court in 2015, was the result of an alleged miscommunication between the son and his parents regarding how they were to use his $25,000 donation to their charity called “Making a Difference Foundation” (MADF).
Tony made the donation in December 2014, shortly after learning that his father’s brain cancer had returned. But his goodwill vanished about a month later when he accused his parents of defrauding him by spending the money on themselves without his permission.
However, his parents contended that they had never entered into such an agreement and that Tony had sent them the "unsolicited and unexpected" check on his own initiative and without any instructions or limitations, according to Daily Beast.
Why did Tony Bobulinski barge into his parents’ house?
When Tony made the donation, he had already achieved financial success in his business endeavors, making him "more than a millionaire,” according to his parents' court testimony.
On the other hand, Robert and Alicia were losing all their money on his tumor treatment. “Many of their resources have gone to others in need, not to their home’s upkeep,” the Virginian-Pilot reported in 2010, noting that Bob’s brain tumor treatment had “further depleted their finances.”
According to court documents, after Bobulinskis cashed the cheque, Alicia informed Tony in a grateful text a few weeks later that they had used the money to pay taxes, bank commitments, dental work, and home upgrades to accommodate his father's diminished mobility.
The thank-you note, however, had the opposite effect, causing Tony to go into a long and venomous rant. “What? Bs,” Tony replied to the text.
He later demanded a conversation with his father and a “line item by line item breakdown” of “every penny” by noon the next day, “or you can feel empowered from a jail cell as I will come after you for fraud and theft.”
For days, Tony continued to belittle his stepmother and threatened to contact the FBI, vowing that “if I have to put Grandpa in front of a judge I will.”
“Own up to your lies you coward, my dad won’t be able to protect you,” he wrote on February 28, adding, “I will come down like a hammer.”
Tony lost his cool on February 28 when he “unannounced barged into our house,” Alicia wrote in a court filing. He appeared “angry and extremely agitated,” she claimed, adding that he “yelled it was not about the money it was about the ‘principal.’”
Alicia requested a protective order three days after the incident, claiming in a written declaration that Tony "put his hands on his father, moving his head and face up, down, and side to side." He knew my spouse had recently experienced a relapse of his brain tumor,” she added.
Less than a month later, Tony sent Alicia a text addressed to Bob, denouncing his father’s “absurd antics” and threatening to engage “the financial crime unit of Va Beach.”
What allegations did Tony Bobulinski make against his parents?
Tony filed his lawsuit in September, just two months before his father’s death. His complaint mentioned conversations that "resulted in admissions by Robert and Alicia that they spent the money for their own selfish purposes," but provided no evidence of any agreement beyond his own recollections.
“At this point, it appears that the Foundation is no longer functioning and that the substantial assets donated by Tony have been utterly wasted,” the complaint said.
As for his father, the complaint said, “Because Robert engaged in deliberate fraud and has shown a callous disregard for Tony’s rights, he is liable for not only compensatory damages, but also for punitive damages, and Tony hereby requests an award of punitive damages.”
In the complaint, he demanded a combined $900,000 in damages from the three defendants, along with attorney's fees, pre-and post-judgment interest, court costs, and “such other and further relief as allowable by law.”
Two months later, his attorney and Alicia exchanged a series of emails, in which the stepmother blamed Tony for his father’s death and asked for “some degree of assurance” that he “will not try to hurt me or my family anymore.”
The suit dragged on for months, with Tony pushing for a jury trial. In July, a Virginia judge rescheduled the trial from August to December, citing Tony's "out of the country on business-related matters."
Then, on September 20, 2016, Tony’s lawyer filed a nonsuit with Alicia’s agreement.
Why Tony Bobulinski sue the Chinese company?
As the trail continued, Tony kept investing hundreds of millions of dollars of his own money—including emergency loans—into a failing offshore US-Chinese branding enterprise based in the Cayman Islands.
At one point, Bobulinski forwarded that faltering business three $50,000 installments around the same time that he was trying to take his dead father’s van from his stepmother, according to court filings.
That China venture soon imploded, and Bobulinski sued for his money back there too. That dispute, now in its seventh year, is ongoing, according to Cayman Islands court filings.