Hunter Biden’s Business Associates Helped Chinese Tycoons Meet With Obama White House Officials, Emails Show

In this screenshot from the DNCC’s livestream of the 2020 Democratic National Convention, Hunter Biden, son of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, addresses the virtual convention on Aug. 20, 2020. Handout/DNCC via Getty Images

Hunter Biden’s business associates helped secure meetings between Chinese tycoons and high-level Obama-era White House officials in 2011, according to emails obtained by author Peter Schweizer and seen by The Epoch Times.

Biden’s then-business associates Devon Archer and Bevan Cooney facilitated a group of Chinese business and political elites from the exclusive China Entrepreneur Club (CEC) to visit the White House and meet with administration officials in November 2011 during their trip to the United States, the emails showed.

The Chinese delegation met with then-Vice President Joe Biden during this trip, according to a CEC document.

An email also suggested that Archer had communicated with Hunter Biden about setting up the White House meeting for the group.

Hunter Biden’s business dealings in China and Ukraine have come under close scrutiny as his father runs for the presidential office. The younger Biden recently also attracted scrutiny for his alleged business deals with Chinese executives at an oil conglomerate that has ties to the Chinese military, as detailed in emails obtained by the New York Post and a Senate report.

Cooney is serving a prison sentence for his role in a 2016 scheme to defraud an American Indian tribe. He authorized Schweizer, author of the 2018 book “Secret Empires,” access to his email account and publication of the emails, the outlet stated. Schweizer first published the findings from these emails in a Breitbart report. These emails are separate from the tranche obtained by the NY Post.

Archer was also convicted in the same 2016 case and is currently awaiting sentencing. He and Hunter Biden were partners in Rosemont Seneca Bohai, an asset management firm. They also both joined the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy firm, in 2014.

On Nov. 5, 2011, Archer was forwarded an email from a business contact, Gary Fears. The email contained a request for help from Mohamed A. Khashoggi, apparently an intermediary for CEC, who sought to secure a visit to the White House and meetings with administration officials. He said the business club had sent meeting invitations to several members of the Obama administration and lawmakers but hadn’t heard back from them.

“A tour of the white house and a meeting with a member of the chief of staff’s office and John Kerry would be great,” Khashoggi wrote.

“If we can set up meetings with Rominy [sic] or non elected officials might be easier,” he added. “Not sure if one has to be registered to do this,” apparently a reference to registration under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Khashoggi described the group’s “mandate is to let the US know that the Chinese ‘private sector’ is ready and willing to invest in America.”

“I think it is a soft diplomacy play that could be very effective,” Khashoggi continued, adding that it would give Hunter Biden’s business partners “good access to [the Chinese] for any deal in the future.”

The CEC, which has been referred to as the “billionaire’s club,” is composed of China’s top business leaders, as well as economists and diplomats. At the time, it had 50 members including Liu Chuanzhi, its then-chairman and founder of computer giant Lenovo, Jack Ma, founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, and Wu Jianmin, a prominent Chinese diplomat.

The income of 44 CEC members totaled more than 1.5 trillion yuan ($224 billion) and accounted for roughly 4 percent of China’s gross domestic product, the email stated.

“This is China Inc.,” Khashoggi wrote of the club.

On Nov. 11, 2011, Fears followed up with Archer in an email asking how a meeting with Khashoggi went. Fears also asked Archer to tell Hunter Biden to call him.

Archer replied, “Hunter is traveling in the UAE for the week with royalty so probably next week before he will be back in pocket.”

In a later reply, Archer wrote, “Couldn’t confirm this with Hunter on the line but we got him his meeting at the WH Monday for the Chinese folks.”

On Nov. 14, 2011, the day of the Chinese delegation meeting, Cooney emailed Fears saying, “Archer got the Chinese guys all taken care of in DC.”

White House visitor logs show that a delegation of about 30 people from CEC visited the White House that day, and was hosted by Jeff Zients, then-deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget.

While the logs don’t show a meeting with then-Vice President Biden, a CEC document containing member biographies indicates the delegation met with him, Under Secretary Robert Hormats, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and Gen. Colin Powell during the 2011 trip.

The meetings with Hormats, Albright, and Powell are listed in an itinerary for the trip. The itinerary also lists a meeting with then-Commerce Secretary John E. Bryson.

Schweizer told Fox News on Oct. 17 that the emails, as well as others that haven’t been released, showed “a wide net of using the Biden name, using access to the White House,” with “Hunter serving as the pipeline to the administration as means to help their clients and gain clients.”

“The names that come up in this are the Chinese, the Russians, the Ukrainians, the Kazakhs,” Schweizer added. “It’s a veritable United Nations of corruption. And what it demonstrates is that Joe Biden, as vice president of the United States, was a center point.”

The Biden campaign and Fears didn’t immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment. Khashoggi and Archer couldn’t be reached for comment.

A previous version of this article misstated the status of CEC’s invitations to members of the Obama administration and lawmakers. The CEC did not receive a response to those invitations. The Epoch Times regrets the error.