Hunter Biden set up dinner for client at Chinese Embassy in DC after Joe’s luncheon: emails
First son Hunter Biden helped to arrange a dinner at the Chinese Embassy in Washington for a client of his now-defunct investment company — by working with a top Beijing diplomatic official he met at a January 2011 luncheon hosted by his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, according to correspondence obtained by The Post and Fox News Digital.
Hunter and Eric Schwerin, his former business associate at Rosemont Seneca Partners, assisted Marvin Lang — the managing director of Guardian Realty in Maryland — in setting up the dinner with Deng Hongbo, the embassy’s deputy chief of mission, on April 28, 2011.
The dinner was later publicized on China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs website.
Schwerin also helped to arrange for Ted Kaufman, a longtime adviser to Joe Biden who was appointed to fill his Senate seat after he was sworn in as vice president in 2009, to deliver the keynote address at the event and paid him $10,000 for the privilege.
The idea for the dinner arose in emails exchanged by Schwerin, Lang and Hunter Biden in December 2010.
Lang, a major Democratic donor, contacted the then-vice president’s son to thank him for a lunch meeting and to say he was “excited” to establish a “long relationship” with Rosemont.
On Jan. 12, 2011, following an exchange of messages among the three, Hunter Biden emailed Schwerin to say: “Marvin wants to know where we are in on finding space for the dinner — Chinese embassy is his #1 choice.”
Seven days later, Schwerin contacted Lang and cc’d Hunter Biden in an email to notify him that Hunter Biden had had a lunch with the “number three official” at the Chinese Embassy and the contact would be “helpful” in setting up the dinner for Guardian Realty, which describes itself as a “fully integrated real estate investment company” on its website.
“[I] just talked to Hunter and he said he sat with the number three official at the Embassy today at lunch and has contact information to follow up after the [Chinese] President has left the US,” Schwerin wrote in the message.
“Hunter’s said his contact will be helpful, but the Minister won’t be able to focus on this until after the delegation has left at the end of the week. Sounds like this is the right contact though,” he added.
On Jan. 19, 2011, the same day as Schwerin’s email, Joe Biden and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hosted a luncheon at the State Department for then-Chinese President Hu Jintao.
Hunter Biden became the subject of a series of blockbuster reports by The Post in October 2020 about his suspicious business dealings in Ukraine and China while his father was vice president.
The basis of the reporting came from documents and emails found on a laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a computer repair shop in Delaware.
Schwerin noted in an email to Hunter Biden the night before the lunch at the State Department that he would be sitting at the same table as Ron Klain, who was then Vice President Biden’s chief of staff and serves in the same role at the White House.
A little more than a week later, on Jan. 28, 2011, Zhou Jingxing, the deputy director at the Chinese Embassy, responded to an email from Hunter Biden about his contacts with “Minister Yang.”
The reference, Fox News reported, is to Yang Jiechi, a member of the Chinese Communist Party since 1971 who served as foreign minister from 2007 to 2013.
“Minister Yang asked me to follow up with you directly. You will be receiving a formal request from Guardian’s Chairman, Marvin Lang, shortly but I wanted to put forward some dates that work on their end: May 5, 12, or 19,” Hunter Biden wrote to Zhou. “We look forward to working with you and thank you for your help and consideration.”
Zhou said he would “check with the Embassy logistics to see if the dining room is available on your proposed dates.”
A month later, emails showed Lang becoming nervous because the embassy hadn’t yet set a date.
“We really need the approval for dinner in writing,” he wrote to Schwerin on Feb. 28.
Schwerin then reached out to Hunter Biden to see if he could secure a confirmation letter from the Chinese and suggested contacting the Turkish Embassy about hosting the dinner instead.
Hunter Biden responded to Schwerin to say that asking for a confirmation letter ran “the risk of seriously offending the Chinese.”
Then in early March, Schwerin assured Lang that Hunter Biden had worked out the details with the Chinese Embassy.
“After our call yesterday, Hunter reached out to Minister Yang and Counselor Zhou and thanked them both for arranging the dinner, said he was looking forward to seeing them both at the dinner and reiterating our interest in having the Ambassador there,” Schwerin wrote to Lang. “It should have been clear how important this was to Hunter and Guardian, so we should be good going forward.”
He also wrote that the dinner would be banquet style, and the cost would be $80 for food — which included nine courses and Chinese dessert and fruit — and $10 per person for wine.
A flurry of emails followed that involved arranging Kaufman to deliver the keynote address at the dinner.
On April 29, a day after the Guardian dinner, Schwerin forwarded an email from Lang to Hunter Biden calling Kaufman’s appearance “terrific and very interesting.”
“As you could tell, there were a lot of questions from our investors. Last night was very exciting and we appreciated Hunter’s involvement. He is very talented and approachable, which is a nice quality. Plus, he is very smart,” Lang wrote to Schwerin. “I would appreciate a formal invoice for our files and will have the check sent out Monday, in any event. We also appreciated your involvement and help with the protocol, speech, etc.”
Lang thanked Hunter Biden personally in a May 1 email for setting up the dinner.
“We appreciated the help that we received from Eric and Rosemont Seneca in drafting a ‘thank-you’ speech to the Minister and the help that we received on the appropriate gift for the Embassy,” Lang wrote.
“We also felt that you added intrinsic value in ‘closing out’ the successful evening with your follow-on explanation to Minister Deng’s answer to a question that was raised. It was a terrific evening,” he continued.
Lang also expressed his gratitude to Hunter Biden for suggesting Kaufman as a “guest speaker.”
The White House, Schwerin, Hunter Biden’s attorney Kevin Morris and Lang did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Post.
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