House Republicans want Hunter biz partner to share Joe Biden records
WASHINGTON – House Republicans on Wednesday asked Hunter Biden’s business associate Eric Schwerin to hand over documents that they believe would reveal President Biden’s involvement in his son’s overseas business deals.
Schwerin frequently met with Joe Biden and his vice presidential staff, according to Obama administration visitor logs, first reported by The Post, and emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop indicate his apparent involvement in Joe Biden’s personal finances.
The invitation signals that Schwerin, who was president of Hunter Biden’s company Rosemont Seneca Partners, could face a subpoena if Republicans retake the House next year.
“We expect Eric Schwerin to provide us with answers to our questions,” a House oversight committee Republican aide told The Post.
“If Americans entrust Republicans with the majority in 2023, we will use tools at our disposal to ensure we get to the truth about whether Joe Biden has financially benefited and helped facilitate Hunter Biden’s business dealings.”
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the top Republican on the House oversight committee, wrote the letter, which was signed by 14 of his colleagues.
“On June 10, 2010, an email from you to Hunter stated: ‘Your Dad’s Delaware tax refund
check came today. I am depositing it in his account and writing a check in that amount back to you since he owes it to you.’ This email shows an intertwined financial relationship between President Biden and his son, the latter of whom has profited from America’s losses to foreign adversaries,” the letter says.
“The Obama-Biden Administration’s subsequent nomination of you as a member of the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad further complicates the Biden family’s private and public dealings. If President Biden and Hunter are sharing funds or if President Biden is in debt to his son — the American people deserve to know it especially in light of the millions of dollars Hunter’s businesses have received from countries adversarial to US interests.”
Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Nancy Mace (R-SC) and Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) are among the letter signers.
The letter asked Schwerin to divulge all communications involving President Biden and Hunter Biden since 2009 when Biden took office as vice president. It also asks for a list of Schwerin’s positions in Biden family companies.
Schwerin and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“To the extent President Biden was indebted to Hunter—a man whose livelihood depended on foreign nations—he may also be indebted to countries not aligned with U.S. interests. It is paramount that the Committee investigate whether there are national security implications to Hunter Biden funding his father,” the letter says.
Joe Biden claimed in 2019 that he had “never spoken” with Hunter Biden about “his overseas business dealings” and White House press secretary Jen Psaki said twice this month that the president is sticking to that claim, despite mounting evidence to the contrary.
The Post reported Saturday that Schwerin visited the White House and vice president’s residence at least 19 times while Joe Biden was vice president. Eight additional visits subsequently were discovered in visitor logs.
Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), a former US ambassador to Japan, on Tuesday pressed Attorney General Merrick Garland on the appearance that President Biden “was involved with” his son’s overseas business dealings, but Garland declined to comment.
“Do you have any reason to dispute the evidence that indicates that President Biden was involved with and using money from Hunter Biden’s business deals?” Hagerty said, noting that, “we have a text message from Hunter Biden to his daughter stating that don’t worry, unlike pop — meaning Joe Biden — I won’t make you give me half your salary.
“So it seems President Biden was serving as vice president and running US foreign policy at the same time that his son Hunter Biden was raking in money from shady foreign business deals. And this was money that was being diverted to benefit Vice President Biden.”
Documents and photos reported by The Post indicate that Hunter Biden introduced his dad to business associates from China, Mexico, Russia and Ukraine — including at the vice president’s residence in Washington.
The US attorney in Delaware, David Weiss, a Trump administration holdover, is conducting a criminal investigation of the first son. The probe is believed to be considering charges for possible tax fraud, money laundering and unregistered lobbying for foreign clients.
Hunter Biden’s overseas deals are gaining broader attention after the Washington Post and New York Times last month belatedly verified emails from Hunter’s laptop that were first reported by The Post in October 2020.
Emails from the laptop indicate that Joe Biden attended a 2015 DC dinner with a group of his son’s associates — including Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi of Ukraine, a trio of Kazakhs and the Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina and her husband, ex-Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov.
A photo depicts Joe Biden posing with the Kazakhstani group at the dinner and one day after the gathering, Pozharskyi emailed the then-second son to thank him for the opportunity to meet his father.
A report drafted by Republican-led Senate committees in 2020 said that Baturina in 2014 paid $3.5 million to a firm linked to Hunter Biden. Baturina is believed to be Russia’s richest woman, but doesn’t face US sanctions that hit other Russian billionaires in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
At his 2020 impeachment trial, President Donald Trump’s defense team cited visitor logs that showed Biden met with his son’s partner Devon Archer on April 16, 2014, around the time Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma, which was founded by corrupt pro-Russia oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky.
Trump attorney Pam Bondi argued that Trump was right to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens because Joe Biden may have been involved in the Burisma arrangement. Archer joined Burisma before Hunter Biden did.
In China, Joe Biden allegedly was involved with his son’s work with CEFC China Energy, which the Washington Post reported last month paid Hunter Biden and his uncle Jim Biden $4.8 million in 2017 and 2018.
Former Hunter Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski says that he spoke with Joe Biden in May 2017 about the Chinese venture. A May 13, 2017, email indicated that the “big guy” would get a 10 percent equity stake in a corporate entity established with CEFC.
Bobulinski alleges that the president was the “big guy” and emails show that in September 2017, Hunter Biden asked for a new sign and keys to an office he was renting in DC’s House of Sweden office building. The sign was to say, “The Biden Foundation and Hudson West (CEFC-US)” and the keys were for his father, Jill and Jim Biden, and a Chinese executive named Gongwen Dong. A spokeswoman for the agency that oversees the property said, however, that the sign was never changed and the keys were not picked up.
Also in China, Hunter Biden cofounded an investment firm called BHR Partners in 2013 less than two weeks after flying with his father to Beijing aboard Air Force Two. Hunter introduced Joe Biden to BHR CEO Jonathan Li in the lobby of a hotel in China’s capital. The fund is controlled in part by state-owned entities and facilitated the 2016 sale for $3.8 billion of a Congolese cobalt mine from a US company to the firm China Molybdenum. Cobalt is a key component in electric car batteries.
Hunter Biden’s attorney Chris Clark said less than a week after President Biden’s November summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping that the first son divested a 10 percent stake in BHR Partners. Hunter Biden and the White House provided no further details.
Photos and emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop further indicate that Joe Biden in 2015 hosted his son and a group of Mexican business associates at the vice president’s official residence. The elder Biden posed for a photo with Hunter and a group that included Mexican billionaires Carlos Slim and Miguel Alemán Velasco.
In 2016, Hunter Biden apparently emailed one of his Mexican associates while aboard Air Force Two for an official visit to Mexico, complaining that he hadn’t received reciprocal business favors after “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.”
Since his father became president, Hunter Biden launched an art career seeking as much as $500,000 for his novice works. The White House developed a plan for those sales to theoretically be anonymous to prevent possible influence-peddling, but ethics experts say that the arrangement actually creates greater corruption concerns. Hunter received at least $375,000 last year for five prints at a Hollywood art show attended by one of his father’s ambassador nominees, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.
