Hunter Biden likes to call himself an artist these days, but is con artist nearer the mark? 

One person who might have an opinion on the topic is a former Israel Defense Forces lieutenant colonel and energy expert, Gal Luft, who at American prompting was arrested in Cyprus last February — and has since gone missing. Did what Israeli media are portraying as Mr. Luft’s “escape” from the politically divided Mediterranean island happen because the House Oversight Committee is zeroing in on his claims that Hunter Biden had an FBI mole who tipped off his Chinese business partners?

This might seem like something out of a spy movie, and nobody seems to know where Mr. Luft is right now. As the Sun has reported, the president had some notably opaque interactions with Cypriot officials when he served as vice president under President Obama. Yet Mr. Luft’s predicament stems from the dual national American-Israeli’s interactions with the president’s son — at least, that is how he saw it when he learned of his arrest earlier this year while trying to board a commercial flight back to Israel from Cyprus. 

Mr. Luft was arrested on charges of trafficking arms to China and Libya but claimed it was “a politically motivated extradition request by the U.S.” In March, subsequent to his arrest and after the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs tried to intercede with respect to the consular situation, the New York Post reported that the House Oversight Committee was investigating some of Mr. Luft’s “explosive claims.”

The Washington Post recently reported on Hunter Biden’s multimillion-dollar deals with a Chinese energy company, the now defunct CEFC China Energy. In what could be described as a coincidence, that article was published only two days after Mr. Luft officially went missing.  

Following Mr. Luft’s disappearance, the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv reported that Mr. Luft accused Hunter Biden of having an FBI mole who he used to illegally provide classified information to his Chinese business partners. He claimed that he tried to alert the Department of Justice in 2019 to the Biden family’s relationship with the Chinese state-controlled CEFC. Specifically, the newspaper also reported, Mr. Luft said that CEFC had paid Hunter Biden and his uncle, Jim Biden, $100,000 and $65,000 in monthly fees, respectively, to acquire information from within the FBI. 

The FBI mole, who has not yet been publicly identified, reportedly went by the name “One-Eye.”

According to the New York Post, a portion of those sums paid by the Chinese to the Bidens were to be able to use the Biden name to promote China’s Belt and Road Initiative around the world.

Between 2015 to 2018, Mr. Luft organized international energy conferences in partnership with Patrick Ho and Ye Jianming, who, separately, were Hunter Biden’s business partners. Mr. Jianming was the chairman of CEFC. The Post reported that Mr. Ho’s nonprofit China Energy Fund Committee, or CEFC-USA, operated as a front organization for Mr. Jianming’s CEFC.

An attorney for Mr. Luft, Robert Henoch, said Mr. Jiamning told Mr. Luft that Hunter Biden had an informant in the FBI or “formerly of the bureau, extremely well placed, who they paid lots of money to [provide] sealed law enforcement information.”

Mr. Henoch told the Post that “One-Eye” told Mr. Jiamning that the Southern District of New York had been investigating him “and/or” Mr. Ho in late 2017 and that “an Asian, an African, and a Jewish guy” were named on a sealed indictment.

The truthfulness of these bombshell claims is something that Representative James Comer, who is spearheading the House probe of the international dimension of the Biden family’s finances, is ostensibly evaluating.

Yet Mr. Luft, who the New York Post reported has “deep intelligence ties in Washington and Beijing,” was convinced that his arrest was bogus and just a way to intimidate him into silence. 

That much appears to have backfired.

In Cyprus, Mr. Luft had been released under restrictive conditions pending his deportation to America to stand trial. On March 28, Cyprus police declared him missing. The following day, his car was found abandoned in a village north of the coastal city of Larnaca. Cypriot police suspect he may have fled on foot to the village of Pyla, from where he might have tried to escape to the “occupied territories.”

Since 1974, Turkey has illegally occupied the northern third of the island of Cyprus. Only Turkey recognizes this area as the “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.”  

A UN-monitored buffer zone separates the internationally recognized Republic of Cyprus from the rogue TRNC. Once an individual crosses into the north, one’s movements are essentially controlled by the relevant Turkish authorities. 

“DOJ is trying to bury me to protect Joe, Jim, and Hunter Biden,” Mr. Luft said in a tweet following his arrest, adding, “Shall I name names?”

Several thousand Israelis live in the southern part of Cyprus, which is less than a 50-minute flight from Tel Aviv.  News reports indicate that the ongoing drama of Mr. Luft has, with its gripping twists and turns, left many of them feeling anxious.

A State Department representative told the Sun late on Thursday, “We are aware of a legal situation involving a U.S. citizen in Cyprus. The Department and the Embassy work to provide appropriate consular assistance to all U.S. citizens in need of it.”