Ron Klain, the Chief of Staff for President Joe Biden, apparently reached out to Hunter Biden in September 2012 to ask for help to raise 20,000 for the Vice President’s Residence Foundation (VPRF) and asked him to “keep this low low key” to prevent “bad PR,” emails reviewed by Fox News Digital showed.
Klain was the head of the foundation, a year after leaving his position as the vice president’s chief of staff, and told Hunter that he needed his help “tackle a piece of unpleasant business,” Fox News reported.
“The tax lawyers for the VP Residence Foundation have concluded that since the Cheney folks last raised money in 2007 and not 2008, we actually have to have some incoming funds before the end of this fiscal year (i.e., before 9/30/12 – next week) to remain eligible to be a ‘public charity,’” he said to Hunter in the email.
“It’s not much – we need to raise a total of $20,000 – so I’m hitting up a few very close friends on a very confidential basis to write checks of $2,000 each,” he said to Hunter.
He added in the email: “We need to keep this low low key because raising money for the Residence now is bad PR – but it has to be done, so I’m trying to just collect the 10 checks of $2,000, get it done in a week, and then, we can do an event for the Residence Foundation after the election.”
Hunter forwarded the email to his business partner Eric Schwerin who had been assisting Hunter with handling his finances.
Schwerin said that they could “discuss this and some other bills on Monday” and asked whether Hunter thought “they would take a corporate check from Owasco,” which was an apparent reference to Hunter’s law firm, Owasco PC.
Three days after the initial email from Klain, who was the chairman of VPRF in 2012, Schwerin emailed Hunter to let him know that he had talked to Klain and that he was checking on whether the foundation would accept a check from Owasco.
It is unclear whether Hunter ended up using Owasco to donate to the foundation or whether he assisted Klain in soliciting donations from other individuals. However, a 990 tax form from the fiscal year 2012 shows that the foundation received $20,500 in contributions that year.
At the time of Klain’s correspondence with Hunter, he was president of Case Holdings, which, according to a press release, is the holding company for “the wide-ranging for-profit and philanthropic interests of AOL co-founder Steve Case and his wife Jean,” and includes investments in Hawaii, the Case Foundation, and Revolution LLC, the venture capital firm where Klain also worked.
He was also on the board of directors for the Center For American Progress Action Fund.
“The Vice President’s Residence Foundation is a nonprofit entity used to assist in preserving and furnishing the vice president’s official residence located on U.S. Naval Observatory grounds,” Fox News said.
“The VPRF is organized and operated in a manner designed to attract public support and maintains a continuous and bona fide program for soliciting funds from the general public,” the organization said in its 2012 tax form.
“The VPRF resumed fundraising at the end of its 2012 Fiscal Year and continues fundraising into the 2013 Fiscal Year,” it said. “Funds raised in both of these years have been exclusively through public sources.”
The president’s son remains under federal investigation for possible violations of tax, money laundering, and foreign lobbying.
Klain defended Hunter on Sunday, insisting that “the president’s confident that his son didn’t break the law. But, most importantly, as I said, that’s a matter that’s going to be decided by the Justice Department, by the legal process. It’s something that no one at the White House has involvement in.”
How deep is this? How far does the conspiracy go?