No sign of $40K loan from Joe Biden to brother James, first family’s moneyman says — undercutting White House story
Hunter Biden business associate Eric Schwerin never noted a purported $40,000 loan from President Biden to his younger brother James — despite having access to the now-president’s checking and corporate accounts as his bookkeeper and tax preparer, a congressional interview transcript released Monday shows.
Schwerin, 54, said during the Jan. 30 deposition with House impeachment investigators that “I don’t recall” Joe Biden having loaned out any money between 2009 and 2016, during which Schwerin helped the then-vice president prepare tax and financial disclosure forms.
“Certainly through the 2016 tax period, I don’t recall any loans that he made,” said Schwerin, who added that he “potentially” did not see any loans Biden made in 2017, when Schwerin was “still was helping [Biden] with his household finances … as he was becoming a private citizen.”
James Biden and his wife Sara wrote a $40,000 check to Joe on Sept. 3, 2017, after James and Hunter received $5.1 million from Chinese-state linked energy firm CEFC, the first brother confirmed to the House committees in a Feb. 21 deposition. The check was marked as a “loan repayment” from a July 28, 2017, wire.
Schwerin noted in his interview that he had “some access” to Biden’s corporate account post-vice presidency, which he gave up “towards the end of 2017 when I stopped this role with him”
James Biden also wrote a “loan repayment” check for $200,000 to Joe Biden on March 1, 2018. That same day, the same amount in the form of a loan was wired to James from now-defunct rural hospital chain Americore, for which he had been seeking Qatari investors.
James Biden told the House committees that there was no documents memorializing either “loan” and he was not charged interest by his brother. The second wire of $200,000 to James Biden came on Jan. 12, 2018.
At the time the “loan repayments” were first revealed in November, White House Counsel’s office spokesman Ian Sams said: “The President, when he was a private citizen, loaned his brother money, and his brother promptly paid him back. [Oversight Committee] Chairman [James] Comer [R-Ky.] is concealing those records as part of his politically-motivated effort to attack the President with baseless lies.”
James Biden further claimed that he had requested the money from Joe’s account to pay for “outstanding bills” through the Wilmington, Del.-based law firm Monzack Mersky and Browder — and did not know if the money came from the now-president’s personal bank account or Joe Biden’s so-called “S-corporation” CelticCapri, which has received money for his speaking and writing engagements.
Rep. Dan Meuser (R-Pa.), the former revenue secretary of Pennsylvania from 2011 to 2015, has since asked the IRS to investigate “the legitimacy of the supposed loan,” which would be considered ordinary income if not marked as a loan repayment or gift in Biden’s 2017 and 2018 tax filings.
The House Oversight and Judiciary Committees released the transcript of the closed-door interview two days before ex-Hunter associates Tony Bobulinski and Jason Galanis are due to appear for a public hearing as the panels pursue an impeachment inquiry into the president.
Another former Hunter Biden business partner, Devon Archer, will not appear after an earlier letter requesting his attendance was apparently never received, giving him insufficient time to prepare a written statement and plan for subsequent testimony, according to a letter from his attorney to the Oversight panel, which was reviewed by The Post.
In his deposition, Schwerin also said he either could not “recall” or did not “know” scores of times — and denied he had any detailed knowledge of millions of dollars the first son received from foreign business associates in China, Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine.
Hunter Biden and some of his ex-business partners have previously testified to the House investigative committees that the president spoke on the phone and met with the foreign associates during and after his time in the Obama White House.
Joe Biden asked Schwerin for his assistance “as a favor,” the witness said, adding that he received no money for his service and never saw Biden take official action to advance his son’s business or perform “political favors.”
That included in Ukraine, where Joe Biden pushed for the firing of prosecutor Viktor Shokin.
Shokin, who was dismissed in March 2016, was investigating Burisma Holdings, a natural gas company on whose board Hunter Biden sat from 2014 to 2019, earning an annual salary of roughly $1 million.
Former Hunter Biden partner Devon Archer, in an interview after his House deposition last summer, said that Shokin had been a considered a “threat” to Burisma after seizing some of the assets of its owner, Mykola Zlochevsky.
Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in US loan guarantees in exchange for Shokin’s ouster in late 2015, he boasted three years later on a panel at the Council on Foreign Relations, but Schwerin declined to say whether the move posed an “ethical quandary.”
“I didn’t think about that at the time, no,” he said.
However, Schwerin did confirm during his testimony that Joe Biden exchanged emails with Hunter’s associates from private accounts labeled “Robinware456” and “Robert.L.Peters.” However, Schwerin was not asked about the contents of those messages.
While helping the vice president with personal finances, Schwerin had also served as president of Hunter’s investment firm Rosemont Seneca Partners.
In her 2022 memoir, Hunter’s ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle, wrote that Schwerin had “managed almost every aspect of our financial lives, so our relationship was an awkward one.”
During his 2020 presidential run, Biden vowed to have “an absolute wall between personal and private [business] and the government,” just as he alleged there was during his years in the Obama White House.
The Post has reached out to the White House and the White House Counsel’s Office for comment.
