The following is excerpted from NY Post reporting. Reader submitted content.
We now know Hunter Biden’s business partner visited the White House at least 27 times while Joe Biden was Vice President. But don’t worry, President Biden promises he doesn’t know anything about it.
President Joe Biden agreed to cover more than $800,000 in bills racked up by his son — including legal fees tied to the winding down of his controversial overseas business dealings — ahead of the 2020 election, according to an email that surfaced Tuesday.
The email — and an attached spreadsheet detailing the debts — call into question Biden’s repeated claim that he’s never discussed son Hunter Biden’s business with him.
The Jan. 17, 2019, message was written by Hunter Biden’s then-personal assistant, Katie Dodge, and sent to accountant Linda Shapero, founder of the Global DEEZ firm in Leesburg, Va.
“I spoke with Hunter today regarding his bills,” Dodge wrote. “It is my understanding that Hunt’s dad will cover these bills in the short-term as Hunter transitions in his career.”
Dodge’s email — which included the greeting, “Hello VP team” — was cc’d to Hunter Biden and Richard Ruffner, who was a personal aide to Joe Biden while he was vice president, after he left office and during his winning White House bid.
The spreadsheet shows Hunter Biden’s debts included more than $130,000 in legal fees due “ASAP” to the law firm of Faegre Baker Daniels, with $28,382 owed for “BHR Restructuring.”
That appears to be a reference to the Chinese company Bohai Harvest RST (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund Management, in which Hunter Biden held a 10 percent stake through a company called Skaneateles LLC.
BHR is primarily owned by Chinese investors, including the state-controlled Bank of China.
Hunter Biden owed Faegre Baker another $20,909 for “Burnham Restructu,” which appears to refer to the Burnham Financial Group, which former Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer and others invested in as part of a plan to create their own financial services conglomerate.
Hunter had an office at the New York headquarters of an asset-management firm that was intended to be merged into Burnham as a part of a deal called a “roll-up,” the Wall Street Journal reported in 2019.
The president’s son — who wasn’t accused of wrongdoing — barely used the office and the firm never merged with Burnham, the Journal said, citing testimony from a 2018 trial in which Archer and two co-defendants were convicted of defrauding the Oglala Sioux Indian tribe in a $60 million bond-issuance scam.
His bills from Faegre Baker also included $82,239 for “Confidential Investi,” for a total of $131,530, according to the spreadsheet.
In December 2019, Faegre Baker merged with another firm to form Faegrea Drinker Biddle & Reath, where partner George Mesires represented Hunter Biden as recently as October 2020.
The White House didn’t immediately respond when asked if the president agreed to pay his son’s bills without reviewing them or asking what they were for.
Mesires didn’t immediately respond when asked if his firm’s bills had been paid.
In December, another lawyer representing Hunter Biden, Chris Clark, told The New York Times that he “no longer holds any interest, directly or indirectly, in either BHR or Skaneateles.”
The assertion came after the White House refused to say whether the first son had divested himself in line with his dad’s campaign promise that his family members “will not be engaged in any foreign business.”
Chinese records show Hunter Biden was no longer on BHR’s board of directors as of April 2020, according to the Times.
Other debts listed in the spreadsheet included payments and insurance for a Porsche, a Ford truck and a boat; tuition for Hunter’s daughters to attend the University of Pennsylvania and the private Sidwell Friends School; and $37,000 a month to his ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle.
A section titled “CREDIT CARDS” included a total outstanding balance of $157,033 and another section, titled “OTHER EXPENSES,” listed monthly dues of $320 and $60, respectively, to the Yale Club of New York City and the 116 Club, a private watering hole near the US Capitol in Washington, DC, that’s favored by politicians and lobbyists.
But more than half of the combined $818,665 in debts listed on the spreadsheet involved various state and federal taxes that totaled $412,309.
The email and the spreadsheet, first reported by the Daily Mail, were stored on a laptop computer that was abandoned at a repair shop in the Biden family’s hometown of Wilmington, Del., in 2019.
The Post exclusively revealed its existence after obtaining a copy of the hard drive in October 2020, and key emails on it were recently authenticated by the Times and the Washington Post.
Additional reporting by Ergys Perhati
Carla Jasper says
Pretty amazing. Should prove to all Americans that our government is as corrupt as any on the planet. We need to vote them all out and get term limits established. Oh wait, our elections are corrupt too!
Paul Plante says
Heh heh heh heh heh!
Thanks for that candid dose of reality!
Martha Angel says
10 to one, us taxpayers paid for all Hunters 800,000 in bills. The way this trashy family’s corruption is everywhere. It burns me up.