A close associate of Hunter Biden, Eric Schwerin, exchanged dozens of emails with President Biden throughout 2014, around the same time that Mr. Biden son was named to a lucrative seat on the board of Ukrainian energy conglomerate Burisma and his father, then vice president, was pressuring Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor.
Although the content of the messages is not known, the White House has maintained that Mr. Schwerin only helped members of the Biden family with trivial financial issues such as filing taxes.
Mr. Schwerin and the elder Mr. Biden exchanged emails 54 times in 2014, with most of those messages sent around the time of his visits to Ukraine. A total of five messages were sent before his first visit to the country, and 27 messages were sent between June and the then-vice president’s trip to Ukraine in November. The first son was hired with his friend Devon Archer to serve on the board of directors of Burisma in April 2014, for which they were paid handsomely.
Emails were first reported by NBC News.
In a September interview with the Oversight Committee, Mr. Schwerin denied that Mr. Biden was ever involved in his son’s businesses. Committee Republicans described the interview as an “informal” conversation and subsequently subpoenaed Mr. Schwerin. He appeared for sworn testimony Tuesday.
The committee’s top Democrat, Congressman Jamie Raskin, described the September meeting with Mr. Schwerin as a fishing trip that yielded no results for the Republican majority.
“The Committee’s interview with Eric Schwerin, who served as accountant to then-Vice President Biden from 2009 to 2017, established that he never saw any transactions to or from the Vice President’s bank account of the time related to affairs conducted by a member of the Biden family,” Mr. Raskin said. “None of the (suspicious activity reports) allege, or even suggest, any potential misconduct by President Biden, nor do they show any involvement by President Biden in Hunter Biden’s business dealings . None of the bank records showed any payments to President Biden, as even Republicans have admitted. There is no evidence of wrongdoing by the president.
A spokesperson for the White House counsel’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Although the White House maintains that Mr. Schwerin was nothing more than an accountant, he was undeniably intimately involved in some of the younger Mr. Biden’s foreign business dealings. From 2002 to 2008, Mr. Schwerin worked with Mr. Biden, Archer and Secretary Kerry’s son-in-law, Chris Heinz, the ketchup heir and son of the late Senator Heinz, at Rosemont Seneca Partners.
Fox News previously reported that Mr. Schwerin had visited the vice president’s official residence, the Naval Observatory, a total of 19 times during the Obama-Biden administration.
Mr. Obama twice appointed Mr. Schwerin to the Commission on the Preservation of American Heritage Abroad, first in 2015 and then again in 2017. Mr. Schwerin’s involvement with the Bidens was long date and very intimate, according to a family member. . The first son’s ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle, revealed in a 2022 memoir that Mr. Schwerin “managed nearly every aspect of our financial lives” during his friendship and partnership with Mr. Biden.
Wealthy Biden donor Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali was also named to the Commission on the Preservation of American Heritage Abroad. She was subpoenaed by the oversight committee, which wanted to know more about her purchases of artwork painted by Hunter Biden.
The younger Mr. Biden also noted in a 2015 email that Mr. Schwerin asked him for an appointment to one of several pseudo-ceremonial presidential commissions “in the aftermath of the 2008 election.”
The elder Mr. Biden has refused to turn over numerous emails from his time as vice president. The Oversight Committee revealed that there are thousands of emails from several different email addresses. accounts who used pseudonyms so Mr. Biden could communicate with friends and family, including his son, Mr. Schwerin, and other associates of the family business.
