Joe Biden met with his son Hunter Biden's Russian, Ukrainian and Kazakhstani business associates at a dinner in Washington D.C. while he was the Vice President, a new set of emails on Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop show. The meeting reportedly took place in 2015 and was a strategic move by Hunter to get his associates introduced to his "powerful" father.
In fact, Hunter also received an email the very next day from Vadym Pozharskyi, an executive of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, to thank him for introducing him to his father. The shocking revelations come amid the president's claim that he had no knowledge of his son's business activities.
Biden, Hunter and Secret Meetings
The dinner, which was reportedly organized on April 16, 2015, was held in the private "Garden Room" at Café Milano, a Georgetown institution whose catchphrase is: "Where the world's most powerful people go." The guest list prepared by Hunter for the dinner included some of the most tainted names including late former Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkovhis's wife Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina, and a Mexican ambassador.
Hunter's dealings with Baturina were earlier flagged by the US Treasury on grounds of suspicion in February 2014. Baturina had reportedly wired $3.5million to Hunter's firm Rosemont Seneca Thornton LLC in February 2014. The investment firm was co-founded by Hunter and Devon Archer, former adviser to then-Secretary of State John Kerry, who helped organize and attended the Café Milano dinner.
The meeting is believed to have been successful after Joe Biden showed up as Hunter received a mail form Pozharskyi thanking him for arranging the meeting with the then vice president.
"Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. "It's realty [sic] an honor and pleasure," Pozharskyi wrote on April 17, 2015.
Claims of Pozharskyi's links with Hunter further got cemented after email exchanged between the two first emerged in October, when the contents of Hunter's laptop were first leaked by the New York Post.
However, Biden's campaign at the time blasted the report, and said a records search indicated no such meeting occurred. Biden spokesman Andrew Bates at that time had said that the paper "never asked the Biden campaign about the critical elements of this story...moreover, we have reviewed Joe Biden's official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place."
Lies after Lies
Interestingly, months before the meeting, in 2015, Hunter Biden wrote to Michael Karloutsos, son of the then-head of the Greek Orthodox Church, that the meeting was "ostensibly to discuss food security", but was actually an opportunity for him to introduce his potential clients and partners to his powerful father, the emails from his abandoned laptop reveal. Karloutsos was also invited to the meeting.
In the email, Hunter remained conspiratorial, cryptically adding that the "most notable' other guest was 'the Prime minister of a country I'll tell you over phone.' Also CEO of WFPUSA [World Food Program USA] and a few other interesting people," he wrote.
"3 seats for our KZ friends. 2 seats for Yelana and husband. 2 you and me. 3 seats for WFPUSA people. Vadym. 3 Ambassadors (MX, ?, ?). Total 14," the May 20 email read. A week earlier Hunter also wrote to Archer with a proposed guest list for the dinner. However, Some of the proposed guests may not have attended.
In their emails planning the dinner, Archer also wrote "Vuk's in Europe at the time and cannot attend," an apparent reference to Vuk Jeremic, a Serbian diplomat and former president of the United Nations General Assembly. Jeremic later became a consultant for Chinese energy giant CEFC, which partnered with Hunter on a multi-million-dollar oil and gas deal.
Two of the three Kazakhstani representatives on Hunter's guest list are not identified. Concerns over Hunter's dealings with Kazakhstanis were highlighted in a Senate report released last year, based on documents from his laptop.
The dinner and the emergence of the emails once again raise questions about how much Joe Biden, who has claimed ignorance of his son's activities, knew about Hunter's dealings with foreign businesses and government officials. As more emails continue to emerge every month, it once again makes clear that Biden's claims about his ignorance about his son's shady dealings are not true.
