A close associate of the Biden family appears to have spent years working in the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office, including during the months when whistleblowers said the office took up an investigation of Hunter Biden.
Alexander Mackler served as press secretary in Joe Biden’s Senate office and, later, as legal counsel in his vice presidential office. Mackler managed the late Beau Biden’s successful campaign for Delaware attorney general in 2010.
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And Mackler served on the Biden-Harris transition team in 2020, helping the Biden administration create the blueprint for its Justice Department.
Mackler also appeared to have a close personal relationship with Hunter Biden. In emails found on Hunter Biden’s laptop, Mackler corresponded frequently with Hunter Biden and his business associates and even referred to Hunter Biden fondly as a “brother” in October 2018. Mackler was working under U.S. Attorney David Weiss in the office at that time, according to his LinkedIn page, which lists him as having worked in the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office from August 2016 to May 2019.
According to testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee from Joseph Ziegler, a top IRS agent on the Hunter Biden case for years, the Delaware office had an investigation into Hunter Biden’s financial dealings by January 2019.
The close relationship between Hunter Biden and a former member of the prosecutorial office investigating him could come under scrutiny as House Republicans dig into the reasons why members of Weiss’s team appeared to slow or block key elements of the Hunter Biden investigation.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf featured prominently in the testimony of two IRS agents who spent years working on the Hunter Biden investigation. Both Gary Shapley and Ziegler, the IRS whistleblowers, said Wolf intervened to stop multiple investigative steps from moving forward, including by preventing FBI agents from asking witnesses any questions about Joe Biden’s involvement in foreign business affairs and by tipping off Hunter Biden’s attorneys about a planned search of his storage unit.
Wolf worked alongside Mackler in the U.S. attorney’s office before Mackler’s departure. She and Mackler prosecuted a major case together, for example.
How their relationship may have factored into the decisions by Wolf that whistleblowers found inexplicable remains unclear.
Mackler now works under Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings. In February, Hunter Biden’s attorneys implored Jennings to open an investigation into the Delaware computer repair shop owner who helped publicize the contents of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, as well as the Donald Trump associates who helped spread the laptop’s contents.
Jennings’s office did not respond to a request for comment about Mackler’s relationship to the Biden’s, as well as whether her office did ultimately open the investigation into the dissemination of the Hunter Biden laptop.
Jennings herself has extensive ties to the Biden family. She endorsed him almost immediately upon his entry into the presidential race in 2019, boasting to social media that she has known the Biden family “for most of my life.”
Mackler’s deep connections to the Biden family raise questions about whether he should ever have come close to an investigation involving the Bidens.
He emailed with Hunter Biden and Eric Schwerin, one of Hunter Biden’s business partners, on what appears to be the first day of his new job at the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office to talk about the office’s email retention policy.
Schwerin joked to Mackler that his response was “the last email you ever receive from me.”
Days after Mackler had started working for the U.S. attorney’s office, he was still working with the Bidens, according to Hunter Biden’s emails.
Mackler helped edit public statements related to the launch of an institute in Joe Biden’s name at the University of Delaware while working for the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office, for example.
In late August 2016 — after, it would seem, Mackler began his job at the U.S. attorney’s office — Mackler fired off an email to Hunter Biden and Schwerin opining on the public perception of Hillary Clinton’s lucrative work with the Clinton Foundation. He argued that there should be a distinction between powerful people who make money once out of office and those who appear to be monetizing their current or future access to government power.
“When someone leaves public life and they or their spouse no longer hold prominent government positions … they can do almost whatever they want and take money from almost anyone they can personally stomach and who passes their personal barometer,” Mackler wrote. “That’s the point (and the good news for us).”
House Republicans are gearing up to conduct a potentially explosive interview next week with Devon Archer, a former business partner of Hunter Biden’s who, facing a conviction and prison time on fraud charges, could have more of an incentive to divulge details to congressional investigators than other witnesses in Hunter Biden’s orbit.
Archer is reportedly poised to testify that Joe Biden frequently spoke to Hunter Biden’s prospective foreign business partners on speakerphone as his son sought to flex his access to his powerful father in the course of negotiations — a clear departure from Joe Biden’s denials of ever having discussed business matters with his son.
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The Justice Department said Monday that it would make Weiss available to testify as soon as Sept. 27 — one week after Attorney General Merrick Garland is slated to appear before Congress.
That time frame could clash with what congressional investigators have planned, however; in a letter to the Biden administration last week, House Republicans said they wanted to conduct transcribed interviews with other witnesses, including Wolf, before they held a hearing with Weiss.
