Former FBI Director Louis Freeh gave $100,000 to a private trust for two of President Joe Biden's grandchildren as he wanted to pursue and engage in "some very good and profitable matters" with the President, according to newly surfaced emails on Thursday.
Freeh met Biden "to explore with him some future work options," according to the new set of emails unearthed from Hunter Biden's laptop.
Freeh apparently made the gift in April 2016, while Biden was the outgoing vice president, and shortly before he told Biden's son Hunter, that he would be 'delighted to do future work with you," according to the emails.
Murky Dealings
According to the bombshell e-mail unearthed from Hunter's abandoned laptop, Freeh was trying to establish a future business relationship with Biden. The July 2016 email marked "confidential and privileged", Freeh wrote to Hunter that he "would be delighted to do future work with you."
"I also spoke to Dad a few weeks ago and would like to explore with him some future work options," Freeh said. "I believe that working together on these (and other legal) matters would be of value, fun and rewarding," the email reads.
However, the conversation didn't stop there. Freeh brought up the idea once again a month later. Freeh, who was then the FBI director, was already working for three foreign businessmen and officials at the time. All these three businessmen were all later convicted of various corruption charges.
In fact, in one of the mails he himself mentioned that he was working for the then-Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak, who was in the midst of a scandal over one of the world's biggest financial frauds, and was later sentenced to 12 years in prison in 2020.
"No doubt both he and you have many options and probably some which are more attractive than my small shop. As you know, we have both a law firm and 'solutions/investigations' group with a very good brand, DC and DEL (and NYC) offices, and a profitable and interesting global practice (eg., I'm currently representing the Malaysian PM and his family)," Freeh had written.
Interestingly, the emails obtained by DailyMail.com from Hunter's abandoned laptop show that around the same time, Freeh also gave $100,000 to a trust for Joe Biden's grandchildren in the form of donation. The "donation" was made to a trust for the children of Hallie Biden, the widow of Joe's late son Beau who later had an affair with Hunter.
Trying to Impress Biden
Understandably, Freeh's decision to donate to the private trust was in a bid to impress both Hunter and his father to strike a business deal with him. "As you know, our family foundation made a $100K contribution to Hallie's children's trust last year," Freeh had written in an April 2017 email.
"My accountants (PWC) now advise that since the grant did not go to a 501(c) organization [a charity], it was not a proper foundation gift. So we've been in touch with the IRS and PWC and want to correct the situation as follows: I'll make a new $100k gift to Haley's trust, and Hallie's trust will reimburse the foundation by paying it $100k," the email read.
Hunter too thanked Freeh in another email after receiving the donation. A document attached to the email chain was titled, "Biden Trust Contribution Letter 4.26.16.pdf."
The emails between Freeh and Hunter Biden do not confirm if Freeh was ever able to do business with Joe Biden or what exactly he had in mind. However, they definitely show that Hunter referred a client — crooked Romanian real estate tycoon Gabriel "Puiu" Popoviciu — to Freeh in mid-2016.
"I wanted to thank you again for referring Gabriel to us and we have finalized an attorney letter of engagement with him," Freeh wrote on July 8, 2016. "I will meet him in Paris Sunday and then we'll deploy to Bucharest and get to work," he further wrote.
Interestingly, Freeh conducted an independent review of Popoviciu's corruption conviction before the Romanian Court of Appeals, but it was affirmed by Romania's High Court of Cassation and Justice, which in 2017 sentenced him to seven in years in prison, Freeh had said in a press release at the time.
The White House, however, hasn't said anything if Biden did actually discuss private business with Freeh while in office, according to the DailyMail report.
Freeh was already close to the Biden family, after serving on the Beau Biden foundation, a charity formed in honor of the Joe Biden's late son to help prevent child abuse. The emails between Freeh and Hunter Biden were stored on a water-damaged laptop computer that Wilmington, Del., repair shop owner John Paul MacIsaac has said was dropped off in April 2019 and never retrieved.
