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President Biden met with at least 14 of Hunter Biden’s business associates while he was vice president in the Obama White House, casting further doubt on the president’s repeated claims that he had no knowledge of his son’s foreign business dealings.
“I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” Biden said in 2019.
But the president met with at least 14 of Hunter’s business associates from the U.S., Mexico, Ukraine, China and Kazakhstan over the course of his vice presidency, a Fox News Digital review found.
Two of Hunter’s Mexican business associates, Miguel Aleman Velasco and Miguel Aleman Magnani visited the West Wing on Feb. 26, 2014, according to the Obama White House visitor logs, and Joe was later photographed with Hunter giving Velasco and Magnani a tour of the White House Brady Press Briefing room.
President Biden (Right) has repeatedly said that he has never spoken to his son, Hunter, about his overseas business dealings, despite attending several meetings with Hunter’s business associates abroad and in the United States (Fox News)
“Do you have pictures from the lunch I had in dad’s office (I think on 2/26) with Miguel Alleman [sic] Sr. And Jr. And Jeff Cooper? If so let me know >and I can send someone to pick them up. Thanks. How was Kiev?” Hunter wrote in an April 2014 email to David Lienemann, Biden’s official photographer during his 8 years as vice president.
Emails, which were reviewed by Fox News Digital, from more than a year later showed that Hunter arranged a video conference with his father and Carlos Slim, a Mexican billionaire with whom Hunter was seeking to do business with at the time, on Oct. 30, 2015.
Less than a month after the video conference, Slim, Velasco and Magnani attended a meeting with Joe, Hunter, and Hunter’s business partner and family friend Jeff Cooper at the vice presidential residence at Number One Observatory Circle, Washington D.C., according to photos dated Nov. 19, 2015 and published by The Daily Mail.
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At the time of that meeting, Hunter and Cooper were in talks with Slim, Velasco and Magnani about investing in a Mexican energy company, The Daily Mail reported, citing documents from Hunter’s infamous abandoned laptop. Emails showed the men also met Joe at the White House, the report said.
In February 2016, just months after the meeting at Joe’s private residence, the vice president reportedly flew Hunter and Cooper on Air Force 2 to Mexico City. Hunter wrote an email to Magnani informing him as much, saying he would be attending a meeting between Joe and then-Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto.
“We are arriving late tonight on Air Force 2 to MX City. We will be there for Thursday – I’m attending meeting w/ President N w/ Dad. Jeff [Cooper] is with me on lane [sic] and we will be with us all day,” Hunter wrote to Magnani on February 24, 2016.
Hunter Biden’s ex-wife revealed in her new memoir that Hunter’s former business partner, Eric Schwerin, “managed almost every aspect of our financial life.” (REUTERS/Joshua Roberts)
Hunter invited Magnani to greet the vice president upon landing, but in the same email, Hunter expressed indignation with Magnani, accusing him of going silent on their business partnership despite Hunter giving him access to his father.
“I have brought every single person you have ever asked me to bring to the F’ing White House and the Vice President’s house and the inauguration and then you go completely silent,” Hunter wrote in the email.
“I don’t know what it is that I did but I’d like to know why I’ve delivered on every single thing you’ve ever asked – and you make me feel like I’ve done something to offend you.” he continued.
More than two years later, Hunter confirmed in a text message to Cooper that he had spoken with his father about Slim, the New York Post reported.
“Spoke to my dad about ‘Slim ask,’” Hunter wrote on July 24, 2018, to which Cooper responded, “Oh that sounds SO F’ING GOOD.”
Joe also met with former Columbia President Andrés Pastrana Arango and Eric Schwerin, the former president of Hunter’s since-dissolved investment fund Rosemont Seneca Partners, at Joe’s Naval Observatory residence on March 2, 2012, according to an entry in Hunter’s personal calendar obtained by the Post.
Later the same day, Hunter, whose Rosemont Seneca had entered a contract months earlier with OAS, a Brazilian construction company with Colombian interests, scheduled a lunch at Café Milano in Washington, D.C., with Arango and Juan Esteban Orduz, the president of Colombian Coffee Federation, the Post reported.
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Joe also attended a dinner with Hunter’s business associates from Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Russia at the same Café Milano in Washington, D.C., on April 16, 2015, records on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop show.
The dinner’s guest list, according to an email from Hunter to his business partner Devon Archer, included Vadym Pozharskyi, an executive at Ukrainian oil and gas company Burisma Holdings, where Hunter served as a board member. The guest list also included the late Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov and his wife, Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina, who was in business with Hunter’s Rosemont firm, though it is not clear whether they actually attended the dinner.
Rick Leach, who at the time was the president and chief executive of WFP USA, told The Washington Post in 2021 that Joe did show up at the dinner, but that he didn’t stay long and no politics or business were discussed.
Hunter Biden, the son of US President Joe Biden, is seen during the annual White House Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC on April 18, 2022. (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
The day after the dinner, Hunter received an email from Burisma’s Pozharskyi that read, “Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together.”
Former Kazakhstan Prime Minister Karim Massimov and Kazakh oligarch Kenes Rakishev also appeared posing alongside Joe and Hunter in an unverified photograph posted online. The Post said it appeared to be taken the same night as the dinner, though the date of the photo could not be determined.
Hunter’s guest list for the dinner included “our KZ friends,” which could presumably be Massimov and Rakishev. At the same time, Hunter was trying to broker an oil deal between Burisma and a Chinese energy company located in Kazakhstan, The Daily Mail reported, citing Hunter’s emails.
In December 2013, then-Vice President Biden traveled to Beijing due to a scheduled meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Hunter expressed interest in joining his father on the trip and ended up going, where he admitted to the New Yorker that he introduced his father to his Chinese business partner, Jonathan Li, who ran the Chinese private-equity fund, Bohai Capital. According to the report, Hunter arranged for a brief handshake in the lobby of the hotel where the U.S. delegation was staying and then Hunter met up with Li privately.
In June 2014, Hunter reportedly arranged for another business associate of his to meet with his father. The New York Post reported that two years earlier Hunter introduced Manuel Estrella, a Latin American business partner, to Cooper as a “a good friend of mine” and “the perfect partner as you explore bringing online gaming to the Dominican Republic.” The report then mentioned that Hunter received an email in June 2014 from Estrella saying, “Hunter, I just met your father! So exiting! Francis Person helped me! Thanks! Hope to see you soon!”
In addition to Hunter’s foreign business associates, Joe met with several of his son’s U.S.-based partners as well, including Schwerin, who made at least 27 visits to the White House during Joe’s vice presidency, Fox News Digital reported.
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One of Schwerin’s visits – on November 17, 2010 – was a sit-down with Joe in the West Wing and multiple other meetings included those with Joe and Jill Biden aides. On May 14, 2016, Joe attended a dinner party hosted by Schwerin at an Italian restaurant in the Chinatown neighborhood of Washington, D.C
Hunter’s ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle, recently released her memoir and noted that Schwerin “managed almost every aspect of our financial life,” including Joe Biden.
The vice president also met with Cooper at least once more after their meeting with Hunter, Slim, Velasco and Magnani in November 2015. According to a text message from Joe to his son on June 15, 2018, the vice president said he was currently “with” Cooper and that he “wants to do some work with you,” according to Miranda Devine’s book “Laptop From Hell.”
Another business associate of Hunter that Biden met with was Francis Person, a top former adviser to Biden when he was a senator and the vice president. After leaving the White House in 2014, he became the president of the Harves Group. According to Person’s Linkedin, which was recently deleted within the last couple weeks, he “[h]elped guide the formation of the Harves Group headquartered in Washington DC, serving as the U.S. affiliate of Harves [Century Group],” a “top tier private chinese real estate development firm,” according to an email Person sent to Hunter in July 2015.
In 2016, when Person was running Harves and emailing with Hunter and Schwerin regarding business deals, he was also running for Congress in South Carolina’s 5th Congressional District. In September of that year, then-Vice President Biden traveled down to South Carolina for a fundraiser for Person. In addition to the visit, Hunter and Schwerin were recruiting their business associates behind the scenes to donate thousands of dollars to the campaign, according to emails reviewed by Fox News Digital. A 2014 Politico profile piece on Person quotes then-Second Lady Jill Biden saying, “Fran has been like a son to Joe and me. For eight years, we traveled the country, shared holidays together … Fran may be leaving the office, but he will always be a part of our family.”
Fox News Digital reported in April that Person visited the Obama-Biden White House at least seven times between 2015 and 2016 after he left the White House to work for Harves, which does a lot of business in China. One of the visits was with Steve Ricchetti, who was Biden’s chief of staff from 2013 until 2017 and is currently Biden’s White House counselor.
FOX Business previously reported that Hunter’s private equity firm, Rosemont Seneca Advisors, held financial interests in multiple Harves affiliates, including a 5 percent stake with Harves Amusement Parks and ownership in Harves Sports and Entertainment, both of which fall under the Washington, D.C.-based Harves Group.
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Devon Archer, Hunter’s former Burisma business partner who was sentenced to federal prison in February for his role in a scheme to defraud a Native American tribe, also visited with Joe in the West Wing of the White House on April 16, 2014, according to the visitor logs. Archer and Hunter joined Burisma’s board that same month.
Four months after the meeting with Archer, Archer was photographed golfing with Joe and Hunter in the Hamptons.
President Biden speaks during a news conference on the final day of the NATO summit in Madrid, Thursday, June 30, 2022. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Another former business partner of Hunter’s, former Rosemont Seneca partner Chris Heinz, the stepson of then-Sen. John Kerry, met with Joe in the West Wing on April 11, 2011, according to the visitor logs.
Tony Bobulinski, the former CEO of SinoHawk Holdings, a Jim and Hunter Biden joint venture with a Chinese energy firm, also apparently met with Joe in May 2017. Text messages obtained by Fox News Digital indicated that a meeting took place, though it’s unclear what the substance of the meeting may have been.
“Great to meet u and spend some time together, please thank Joe for his time, was great to talk thx Tony b,” Bobulinski wrote in a text to Jim Biden, Joe brother, on May 2, 2017.
“I’ve seen Vice President Biden saying he never talked to Hunter about his business,” Bobulinski told Fox News Digital in October 2020. “I’ve seen firsthand that that’s not true, because it wasn’t just Hunter’s business, they said they were putting the Biden family name and its legacy on the line.”
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Tony Bobulinski, a former associate of Hunter Biden, talks with reporters before the presidential debate, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2020, in Nashville. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
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Despite meeting with at least fourteen of Hunter’s business partners, Joe has repeatedly denied discussing any business ventures with his son, who is under federal investigation.
The investigation into Hunter’s tax affairs, which began in 2018, has reached a “critical stage,” a source previously told Fox News Digital. Officials are looking into whether to charge the first son with various tax violations and possible foreign lobbying violations.
A separate source told Fox News Digital that the federal grand jury looking into Hunter’s business dealings wrapped up its latest term late last month but said no charges have been filed. Hunter has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
The White House and Hunter Biden’s attorney did not respond to Fox News Digital requests for comment.
Fox News’ Cameron Cawthorne contributed to this report.
