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President Joe Biden has agreed to cover more than $800,000 in bills racked up by his son — including legal fees related to the end of his controversial overseas business dealings — ahead of the 2020 election, an email shows. which surfaced on Tuesday.
The email – and an attached spreadsheet detailing the debts – challenge Biden’s repeated claim that he never discussed his son Hunter Biden’s affairs with him.
The January 17, 2019 message was written by Hunter Biden’s personal assistant, Katie Dodge, and sent to accountant Linda Shapero, founder of Global DEEZ in Leesburg, Virginia.
“I spoke with Hunter today about his bills,” Dodge wrote. “I understand Hunt’s father will cover these short-term bills as Hunter progresses in his career.”
Dodge’s email – which included the greeting, “Hello VP team” – was copied to Hunter Biden and Richard Ruffner, who was a personal assistant to Joe Biden while he was vice president. , after leaving office and during his winning bid for the White House. .
The spreadsheet shows Hunter Biden’s debts included more than $130,000 in legal fees owed “ASAP” to the law firm Faegre Baker Daniels, with $28,382 owed for the “BHR restructuring.”
This appears to be a reference to Chinese company Bohai Harvest RST (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund Management, in which Hunter Biden held a 10% stake through a company called Skaneateles LLC.
BHR is mostly owned by Chinese investors, including the state-controlled Bank of China.
Hunter Biden still owed Faegre Baker $20,909 for ‘Burnham Restructured,’ 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 aiming to create their own financial services conglomerate.
Hunter had an office at the New York headquarters of an asset management firm that was to be merged with Burnham in a deal called a “roll-up”, The Wall Street Journal reported in 2019.
The president’s son – who has not been accused of wrongdoing – barely used the office and the company never merged with Burnham, the Journal said, citing testimony from a trial by 2018 in which Archer and two co-defendants were convicted of defrauding the Oglala Sioux Indian. tribe in a $60 million bond issue 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 company to form Faegrea Drinker Biddle & Reath, where partner George Mesires represented Hunter Biden as recently as October 2020.
The White House did not immediately respond when asked if the president would agree to pay his son’s bills without reviewing them or asking what they were used for.
Mesires did not immediately respond when asked if his company’s bills had been paid.
In December, another attorney representing Hunter Biden, Chris Clark, told The New York Times that he “no longer holds any interest, direct or indirect, in BHR or Skaneateles.”
The claim came after the White House declined to say whether the first son stripped himself in line with his father’s campaign promise that members of his family ‘will not be engaged in any foreign business’.
Chinese records show that Hunter Biden had not been on BHR’s board since 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 and 116 Club, a private watering hole. hole near the United States Capitol in Washington, DC, which is favored by politicians and lobbyists.
But more than half of the $818,665 in combined debt listed on the spreadsheet involved various state and federal taxes totaling $412,309.
The email and spreadsheet, first reported by the Daily Mail, were stored on a laptop that was abandoned at a repair shop in the Biden family’s hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, in 2019.
The Post revealed its existence exclusively after obtaining a copy of the hard drive in October 2020, and the key emails it contains were recently authenticated by The Times and The Washington Post.
Additional reporting by Ergys Perhati
