The Hollywood lawyer who paid Hunter Biden’s taxes and covered his living expenses told Congress that President Biden ‘always makes jokes’ about his slicked-back, shoulder-length hair, but evaded many questions pointed during the impeachment inquiry into the alleged corruption of the Biden family.
Kevin Morris, 60, claimed in a deposition last week that he did not remember the details of his purchase of his first son’s 10% stake in a Chinese state-backed investment fund – this which caused headaches in the White House during Joe Biden’s first year. office – or on loans to Hunter who could exceed $5 million.
“The president waved and I think he said hello,” the mostly gray entertainment lawyer recalls of a 2021 White House visit where Hunter, 53, showed him around .
“He always makes jokes about my hair. I think he put a split in my hair. That was it.”
Morris, whose support of the first son includes commissioning a documentary crew to follow him for a potential reality TV-style production, testified in the closed-door deposition that he instantly became the lawyer from Hunter after meeting him at a late 2019 fundraiser for Joe Biden, meaning he can’t talk about much due to attorney-client privilege.
Morris said it was not yet clear when or how the documentary footage would be used.
“We film Hunter a lot as part of preparation, or as an asset to have in case it’s required and for legal reasons,” Morris said. “We haven’t decided yet whether we’re going to sell it as a commercial documentary.”
In his testimony, Morris gave vague confirmation that he visited the White House three times, including a Fourth of July picnic last year and for Hunter’s daughter’s wedding, Naomi, in 2022, and that he provided Hunter Biden with approximately $5 million in loans and took control of an entity owned by Hunter Biden that held a 10% stake in Chinese state-backed BHR Partners .
But Morris claimed he didn’t remember many details or couldn’t release them because of attorney-client privilege.
“I have been his lawyer since the first day we met. I became his friend, too,” said Morris, who described how he and Hunter met briefly as he was leaving the November 2019 fundraiser.
Host Lanette Phillips later reached out to see if he would be willing to meet Hunter, which happened in December 2019.
Morris said he and Hunter spoke for about five hours at Hunter’s home in Los Angeles and that it was “one of the most important meetings of my life” – and added: “I thought Hunter was extremely mistreated.”
“I’m not sure (of) the exact amount” he lent Hunter Biden, Morris said.
“I don’t remember” the amount most recently accounted for, he added – although under questioning he said it was “basically” accurate that he had lent Hunter about $4,000. $9 million between 2020 and 2022, as claimed by IRS case agent Joseph Ziegler, who worked on a tax fraud case against the first son for five years before being removed from office. investigation shortly after alleging a cover-up to protect Joe and Hunter Biden.
Morris said his support for the first son amounts to “less than 10 percent” of his total assets.
He said he also made payments to Hunter’s ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle, and Lunden Roberts, the former adult entertainer with whom Hunter shares a daughter.
Although the loans begin to mature in 2025, Morris acknowledged that there is a possibility that he will not be repaid, which would eventually force Hunter to wash his cars as compensation.
“As (with) any creditor … if they are in default under the terms of the note, yes, the holder has the option to enforce it,” Morris said. “You could do a lot of things. They can come wash your car for the rest of their lives.
Details of Morris’ acquisition of the stake in Chinese state-backed investment fund BHR Partners remain unclear. He said he believed he purchased the 10% stake — taking over Hunter’s Skaneateles LLC — for $157,000, but may also have repaid a $250,000 loan from CEO Jonathan Li that was made at Hunter in 2019.
After initially testifying that his reasoning for purchasing the stake was “privileged,” he said, “I did the transaction because, you know, I valued it as a businessman, and I I thought this was something that could be a very successful investment. »
A commenter asked Morris, “Could you tell us after this interview when you purchased BHR?”
“Yeah,” he agreed.
“And for how much?”
Morris replied again: “Yeah.”
Some of the answers given by Hunter’s so-called “sugar brother” were unclear or contradictory.
“Did you have a written agreement with Hunter Biden regarding the sale of Skaneateles? » asked a speaker during the impeachment inquiry.
“I don’t know,” Morris began. “I do not believe that. Or… I don’t know. Probably, yeah. Probably, it was the – I guess I had to – okay, yeah. The answer is yes.”
When asked, “Does this contract allow Hunter Biden to repurchase BHR at some point?” “, Morris replied: “I don’t – I can’t tell you… Which means I don’t know.
BHR Partners was formed within 12 days of then-Vice President Joe Biden arriving in Beijing in 2013 with Hunter, the Wall Street Journal reported. While there, Joe Biden had coffee with new CEO Li, Hunter Biden’s former business partner Devon Archer told Congress in July.
Joe Biden then wrote college recommendation letters for Li’s children and greeted him on loudspeaker, Archer testified.
Documents from Hunter’s abandoned laptop linking his father to business dealings in countries like China and Ukraine would not be released when Hunter first met Morris, but the latter’s overseas dealings , then the former second son, had attracted the attention of the press and Morris took action to pay his tax bills.
Morris wrote to a team of accountants on February 7, 2020 — about two months after meeting Hunter at his father’s campaign fundraiser — that they should expedite their work on Hunter’s tax documents to avoid “considerable risk personally and politically.”
But Morris insisted in his testimony that he was not thinking about the 2020 election, which Republicans say could constitute a campaign finance violation, but rather about the impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump for is pressuring Ukraine to investigate the Biden family’s dealings in Ukraine, where Hunter was fined. a salary of up to $1 million a year to sit on the board of directors of the gas company Burisma while his father directed US policy towards that country.
Trump’s Senate trial, however, ended two days before the email was sent.
