Hunter Biden helped hire aides who mishandled Joe’s classified documents

Within hours of the release of a special prosecutor’s report finding he “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials” as a private citizen, President Biden rushed to the White House podium to blame his former “staff.”

“I take responsibility for not having seen exactly what my staff was doing,” the president maintained.

Without identifying them by name, special counsel Robert Hur narrowed the suspects to two former aides: “Executive Assistant” and “Staff Assistant 3.”

He said they gathered up more than 180 classified records totaling more than 600 pages and packed them into 15 boxes as Biden left the White House in January 2017.

Documents confirm that the staffers in question are Kathy S. Chung, who worked with Hunter Biden at the Commerce Department, and Anne Marie Muldoon, nee Person, who worked for him at Rosemont Seneca Partners, a key pass-through for foreign wire payments to Hunter Biden.

Chung and Muldoon were the two most important people in Joe Biden’s office suite. They were the gatekeepers who controlled the front office that adjoined his West Wing office, and they stored his classified papers in file cabinets and in his safe.

Biden trusted them implicitly since they came to him on the recommendation of his son Hunter.

Five Biden WH Employees Involved in Biden’s Stolen
Classified Docs Case – Biden Lied About Timeline!
GATEWAYPUNDIT ^ | 10/13/2023 | cristina laila
Posted on 10/13/2023, 2:17:15 PM by bitt

The House Oversight Committee this week revealed that five White House employees were involved in Biden’s stolen classified documents case.
<><>Joe Biden STOLE SCIF-designated classified documents and improperly stored them at the U of Penn “Biden Center.”
<><>Biden also stored classified documents in his garage next to his Corvette where his son Hunter had access to the sensitive materials.

Nine boxes of documents were taken from Joe Biden’s lawyer’s Boston office and we have no idea what is in those boxes because the National Archives is covering up for Biden. Joe Biden also withheld information from the Senate Intel Committee.

Recall that it was reported that Joe Biden’s attorney first discovered “Obama-Biden administration documents in a locked closet while packing files as they prepare to close out Biden’s office in the Penn Biden Center” in November 2022. This timeline presented by Biden’s attorney is of course a lie.

Joe Biden’s former assistant as Vice President, Kathy Chung, in April testified to the House Oversight Committee about the mishandling of classified documents by Biden since his time as Vice President. Chung testified that White House Counsel Dana Remus tasked her with retrieving boxes of classified documents from Penn Biden Center as early as May 2022.

Joe Biden knew about his own classified documents scandal brewing long before he directed his DOJ to raid Mar-a-Lago – the timeline actually goes back to March 2021. According to new information released by the House Oversight Committee, Joe Biden lied about the timeline. Annie Tomasini, Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor to the President and Director of Oval Office Operations, went to Penn Biden Center to take inventory of President Biden’s documents and materials on March 18, 2021.

Biden lied by omission! “We have discovered new information about the number of White House employees involved in President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents,” the House Oversight Committee said on Wednesday.

“President Biden’s attorney stated that the discovery of classified documents at Penn Biden Center occurred on November 2, 2022.” they said. “Our Committee has developed evidence showing the timeline of relevant events began in 2021 and involved at least five White House employees,” the Republican-led Committee said....MORE

Biden placed Staffer Chung Who Mishandled China, Iran Secrets in High-Security Pentagon Job
By Paul Sperry, RealClearInvestigations.com, February 15, 2024

pic——MarcoPolo501c3.org Above, Kathy Chung (circled), the Hunter Biden friend enlisted as “gatekeeper” for his father as Vice President. She remains in a sensitive Pentagon post after Special Counsel Robert K. Hur implicated her in the mishandling of Joe Biden’s classified documents.

While Special Counsel Robert Kyoung Hur has raised the issue of mental deterioration in explaining why he declined to prosecute 81-year-old Joe Biden for illegal retention and sharing of classified documents, the president chose another rationale to declare himself not culpable: He shifted the blame to the staffers who boxed up his records as he left the vice president’s office in 2017.

At a press conference hastily assembled after the Hur report’s release, Biden said he assumed his aides had shipped “all” the documents to the National Archives in College Park, Md. “I wish I had paid more attention to how the documents were being moved and where,” he said. “I thought they were being moved to the Archives. I thought all of it was being moved [there].”

The president’s explanation does not address how and why he shared classified material with a ghostwriter, but it shines a light on the longtime assistant who was in charge of packing his papers, Kathy Sang-ok Chung.

Chung, an old friend of Hunter Biden, who worked with Hunter at the Clinton Commerce Dept, was recommended by Hunter for a job with Joe Biden in 2012 when he was vice president. She told investigators she oversaw the transfer of the contents of Biden’s file cabinets and desk drawers into 15 boxes when he moved out of the West Wing in January 2017.

While other office material did go to the National Archives, Hur rebuked Biden for keeping more than 600 pages of classified information – including military secrets and intelligence sources and methods – in unlocked and unauthorized containers at multiple locations, including a tattered box in the garage of Biden’s Delaware home. The stash included information marked “top secret” involving Iran, China, Afghanistan, and Ukraine. Some of the secrets are compartmented by codewords and can only be stored and read in a secure facility known as a SCIF.

The Biden documents that Chung herself packed, unpacked, and repacked “are the most highly classified, sensitive and compartmented materials recovered during our investigation,” Hur wrote..........snip

ohiopressnetwork.com

snip

After leaving office, Biden had a continuing interest in the Iran nuclear deal, including defending it against criticism by President Trump, who threatened to pull out of the pact and did so in 2018. In response, Biden prepared speeches and memos with Penn Biden Center staff advocating for the deal. They also developed talking points on the subject for Biden’s meetings with Israeli leaders at the center. Holding on to the Iran intelligence and notes would have helped Biden formulate such arguments and been useful source material for his memoir.

As the guardian of his files, Chung helped Biden research the book, “Promise Me, Dad.” It’s not known if Biden or Chung referenced any of the materials from the boxes in the original manuscript of his book, which was published in November 2017 and revealed insider accounts of Biden’s various roles in U.S. foreign policy, including Ukraine. It also mentioned the Iran nuclear deal, but did not go into detail about the negotiations. Biden listed Chung first among people he acknowledged for their contributions: “Thank you for all of this, and more, to Kathy Chung.”

Chung also worked with Biden’s ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer. In February 2017, about a month after Biden left office, Hur said Biden discussed a classified memo on Afghanistan with Zwonitzer while they met at his McLean, Va., rental home. Zwonitzer taped their conversation, and though he deleted his recordings after learning a special prosecutor had been appointed to investigate Biden’s classified docs scandal, Hur was able to get FBI computer-forensics experts to restore the audio. (Hur declined to prosecute Zwonitzer because he said he couldn’t be sure he was trying to obstruct his investigation.) On the tapes, Biden can be heard saying he had “just found all the classified stuff downstairs.” Downstairs from where they met was Biden’s office, where he stored his papers.

Hur believes Biden was referring to the same marked classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan that FBI agents found in 2022 in his Delaware garage. (He moved the files he kept in his private office in McLean to Wilmington in 2019.) Biden last week denied sharing any classified intelligence with his ghostwriter, and he asserted he has no idea how the classified papers on Afghanistan military strategy and troops wound up in a box in his garage.

Also part of Biden’s book team was Biden’s personal lawyer Bob Bauer, who brokered the contract with the publisher Flatiron Books, an imprint of MacMillan Publishers. Bauer happened to be one of the lawyers who tried to ship Biden’s Penn Biden stash of documents to his home in Wilmington and to a law office in Boston just a few months before the Justice Department raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate looking for classified documents.

In effect, Hur exonerated Chung and Biden over the highly classified documents that were stashed in closets, credenzas, and cabinets at the Penn Biden Center. He concluded that the boxes of secret White House papers simply ended up there “by mistake.”

“The evidence suggests that the marked classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center were sent and kept there by mistake,” he concluded in his report. “Therefore, we decline any criminal charges related to those documents.”

The Department of Justice gave former President Trump and his aides no such benefit of the doubt concerning the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago. Special Counsel Jack Smith indicted Trump for “willful retention of classified documents,” among other alleged crimes. He also charged two Mar-a-Lago employees with conspiracy to conceal classified records and obstruction of justice.

Trump is expected to file a motion to dismiss the DOJ’s case against him, arguing “selective prosecution” based on DOJ declining to indict Biden over similar allegations. His lawyers have until Feb. 18 to file such pretrial motions.

Originally published on api.realclear.com, part of the BLOX Digital Content Exchange.

Biden’s violations of the Espionage Act look worse by the day
Undermining Americans’ safety and security was of little or no concern
Flopping Aces ^ | 02-26-24 | DrJohn
Posted on 2/26/2024, 12:19:56 PM by Starman417

Joe Biden violated the Espionage Act. Of that there is no question. He was not indicted, not for lack of evidence but because the Special Counsel felt he would present himself as a doddering forgetful old man. New information shows just how badly Biden compromised the US.

Yesterday Paul Sperry reported FBI agents caught Joe Biden illegally hoarding a dozen+ notebooks containing classified info, inclg:
— “US intelligence sources, methods & capabilities”

— “Activities of foreign intelligence services”

— “US military programs & capabilities”

— “Foreign military programs”

Exactly the kind of things the Chinese Communist Party would find interesting. These documents were moved to the Penn Biden Center at the U of Pennsylvania by Biden aide Kathy Chung. As usual, Biden refused to accept any responsibility for the handling of those documents:

At a press conference hastily assembled after the report’s release, Biden said he assumed his aides had shipped “all” the documents to the National Archives in College Park, Md. “I wish I had paid more attention to how the documents were being moved and where,” he said. “I thought they were being moved to the Archives. I thought all of it was being moved [there].”

The doddering old man was unconcerned about the handling of highly classified information. Enter the mysterious Kathy Chung

Chung, an old friend of Hunter Biden, began working for Joe Biden in 2012 when he was vice president. She told investigators she oversaw the transfer of the contents of Biden’s file cabinets and desk drawers into 15 boxes when he moved out of the West Wing in January 2017. While other office material did go to the National Archives, Hur rebuked Biden for keeping more than 600 pages of classified information – including military secrets and intelligence sources and methods – in unlocked and unauthorized containers at multiple locations, including a tattered box in the garage of Biden’s Delaware home. The stash included information marked “top secret” involving Iran, China, Afghanistan, and Ukraine. Some of the secrets are compartmented by codewords and can only be stored and read in a secure facility known as a SCIF.

This is not the first time Chung has been found to have mishandled sensitive government documents. In the late 1990s, when she worked with Hunter Biden at the Commerce Department as an administrator, she and her boss Melissa Moss were cited by a federal judge for failing to turn over documents sought in a Freedom of Information Act case, as RealClearInvestigations first reported. They were accused of withholding and even destroying key documents in a search that the judge ruled “grossly inadequate” and “unlawful.”
The documents were moved several times under lax security

The record shows that Chung personally dispersed the sensitive material to at least three locations in the years when Biden was out of office, 2017-2021 – including two temporary office sites before they were “discovered” in 2022 at the Penn “Biden Center” in D.C. in an unlocked office frequented by visitors. They were brought to the Penn Biden Center and stored with virtually no security at all. Anyone was free to access them.
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...

cont

Key Player in Biden Documents Removal Was Caught Up in Bill Clinton-Era Chinagate Scandal

By Paul Sperry, RealClearInvestigations, June 08, 2023

pix——Google Street View
Above, the location in the capital’s Chinatown where Biden aide Kathy Chung in 2017 transferred boxes with top-secret material. She also figured in the Chinagate fundraising investigation of the 1990s.

The custodian of Joe Biden’s vice presidential records, a key witness in his classified documents probe, was caught up in another documents scandal while working at the Commerce Department during the Clinton administration, court records reveal.

Longtime Biden aide and gatekeeper Kathy S. Chung, who has been interviewed by federal prosecutors and congressional investigators in the Biden case, was part of a team sanctioned for withholding and even destroying key documents in the federal case that sought sensitive records from a central figure in the so-called Chinagate fundraising investigation of the late 1990s, RealClearInvestigations has learned exclusively.

link-—AP
Hunter Biden: Questions about the period in 2017-2018 when the Chinese were wiring almost $6 million to Hunter and his uncle Jimmy.
AP

A special prosecutor is now investigating whether Biden unlawfully handled top secret materials in early 2017, when he tasked Chung with removing boxes containing classified documents from the White House and storing them at various private offices in D.C., including the Chinatown neighborhood. Some of the highly sensitive papers also ended up at his home in Wilmington, Del.

Noting that Chung came into Biden’s orbit through working with the president’s son, Hunter, during the 1990s, congressional investigators want to know if the Biden family dealings in China have anything to do with the stockpiling of classified documents. They note that the mishandling of White House papers took place during the 14-month period in 2017-2018 when the Chinese were wiring almost $6 million in payments to Hunter and his uncle Jimmy Biden without providing any known legitimate services. They have expressed concern that the payments, which were flagged by the U.S. Treasury Department, were part of a Chinese intelligence-gathering operation.

Chung is central to the Justice Department’s investigation of Biden’s breach of classified documents.

link-—AP
James Biden, with wife Sara: Were payments to him part of a Chinese intelligence-gathering operation?
AP

On Jan. 4, federal agents interviewed Chung while working with an investigative team led by U.S. Attorney John Lausch, who was tasked to conduct a preliminary probe of the security breach.

Alarmed by what his investigators reported back to him about Chung’s role in the possible illegal removal and retention of state secrets, Lausch urged Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special counsel. The following day Garland complied, naming veteran federal prosecutor Robert K. Hur to take over the criminal case as special counsel. Hur’s office reportedly has obtained more than 100 pages of documents from Chung, including emails and text messages.

While Donald Trump and Mike Pence are also under investigation for removing classified documents from the White House and storing them at their private residences, GOP congressional investigators say comparisons to Trump and Pence miss the point. In interviews with RCI, they insisted that Biden’s document scandal is potentially more serious than just mishandling state secrets. They suspect it could mushroom into a counterespionage case involving China and national security, though the White House dismisses such speculation as “baseless.”

link -— AP
Robert Hur, special counsel: His office reportedly obtained more than 100 pages of documents from Kathy Chung.
AP

Chung’s lawyer Bill Taylor did not return a request for comment. But in an earlier statement, he scolded Republicans for “suggesting someone is a traitor without any evidence.”

Chung’s dual role – as an aide to Joe Biden when he was vice president and a friend of Hunter Biden, who emails show received sensitive information from Chung from his father’s office – further highlights the murky ethics that exist between the Biden family’s public service and business interests.

Hunter Biden and Chung have a long history dating back to their days working together at the Commerce Department during Bill Clinton’s presidency. It was there that Chung – a longtime Democrat working in the federal bureaucracy – became a witness in a case involving convicted Chinagate fundraiser Jian-Nan “John” Huang, who was a top Commerce official.

link-—AP
John Huang: In 1999, pleaded guilty to a felony violation of campaign finance laws for arranging illegal foreign donations.
AP

In 1993, President Clinton named Huang, a China-born banker friend from Little Rock, deputy assistant secretary of international economic affairs at Commerce, where he was responsible for Asian trade matters. Within a month, Huang was given a top secret security clearance and received twice-weekly intelligence briefings by CIA analysts. At the same time, it was later revealed, he was meeting regularly with Chinese diplomats and other officials tied to Beijing.

snip

FTA

“I take responsibility for not having seen exactly what my staff was doing,” the president maintained.

Like Biden, these staffers have avoided any criminal charges. Who are they?

Without identifying them by name, special counsel Robert Hur narrowed the suspects to two former aides: “Executive Assistant” and “Staff Assistant 3.”

He said they gathered up more than 180 classified records totaling more than 600 pages and packed them into 15 boxes as Biden left the White House in January 2017.

Gatekeepers——Documents confirm that the staffers in question are Kathy S. Chung, who worked with Hunter Biden at the Commerce Department, and Anne Marie Muldoon, nee Person, who worked for him at Rosemont Seneca Partners, a key pass-through for foreign wire payments to Hunter Biden.

pic—Kathy S. Chung (far right) was one of then-Vice President Joe Biden’s staffers who packed classified documents for Biden before he left office in 2017.
Carla Hayden / Twitter

Biden trusted them implicitly since they came to him on the recommendation of his son Hunter. In effect, it was Hunter who placed them in their sensitive posts inside the White House, where they had unfettered access to “the most highly classified, sensitive, and compartmented materials recovered during our investigation,” Hur noted in his report.

SEE ALSO Biden ‘willfully’ kept classified info, would come off as ‘elderly man with poor memory’ at trial, scathing report says

And they continued to communicate with Hunter throughout their tenure in his father’s office, assisting his foreign business schemes, according to emails obtained from his abandoned laptop and from the National Archives.

Hunter got his old Commerce Dept colleague Chung her White House job in 2012, the year before Hunter traveled with the vice president on Air Force Two to Beijing to seal a lucrative investment deal with the Chinese. Chung booked the trip, records show. The executive assistant post opened up in his father’s office in May 2012, and Hunter proposed his old chum take it. He described the job as replacing the “primary gatekeeper for the VP [and the] conduit everyone goes through to get to [Joe Biden].” In addition, she’d handle “all personal stuff” for the vice president, according to Hunter’s email to Chung.

That meant, as it turned out, acting as the custodian of all of Biden’s White House records, including classified material. Chung was thrilled to be considered for the position, which required Top Secret security clearance — “Thanks for calling and thinking of me,” she emailed Hunter — and agreed to an interview. “I just met with your Dad again and he officially offered me the job,” she gushed in a June 13, 2012, email to Hunter. “I cannot thank you enough for thinking about me and walking me thru this.”

Then in mid-2014, Hunter recommended Muldoon for the job of Chung’s assistant. At the time, she was working as Hunter’s aide at Rosemont Seneca. Her husband, Mike Muldoon, had also worked for Hunter at Rosemont Seneca years earlier.

Biden Crime Family business——Records show Chung and Muldoon still arranged overseas trips for Hunter Biden and his Rosemont partners while working in VP Biden’s office. They sent and received hundreds of emails with Hunter and Rosemont. Between July 2012 (when Chung came aboard) and April 2015, the latest data available, Rosemont Seneca shows up in a whopping 921 emails generated from the vice president’s office, according to a recent partial release of Vice President Biden’s records by the National Archives concerning “Hunter Biden, James Biden and their foreign business dealings.”

The records reveal that, among other things, Chung and Muldoon fielded requests from Hunter for signed photos of Joe Biden, letters from the vice president for his associates and tickets to White House events, including several state dinners and luncheons with foreign leaders.

SEE ALSO Key White House officials had strong ties to Hunter Biden before dad’s presidency, emails show

In September 2015, for example, Chung emailed Hunter to invite him to a lunch with Chinese President Xi Jinping hosted by Biden. In August 2016, according to Secret Service visitor logs, Muldoon escorted into the West Wing James Bulger — nephew of the notorious Irish mobster Whitey Bulger — after Bulger and Hunter formed BHR Partners, an investment fund controlled by the state-owned Bank of China.

A month after Chung oversaw the removal of the secret vice presidential papers in 2017, Hunter Biden attempted to poach her to work for him directly. “Come work with me,” he wrote, “so that I can make everybody money.” At the time, Hunter was courting Chinese businessmen who ended up paying him and other Biden family members $6 million for unspecified services.

Though Chung said she was interested in Hunter’s offer, she ultimately stayed on as Joe Biden’s assistant at his new digs at the Penn Biden Center in DC, where Hunter had VIP access. It was there that Biden’s classified docs were first “discovered” by his lawyers, who were concerned about his own liability after the Justice Department raided former President Donald Trump’s home in Florida and seized boxes of classified papers.

Cozy relationship——Chung told Hur she never noticed any classified papers among the records she packed and unpacked, before filing them in unlocked cabinets and closets in Biden’s unlocked office, according to Hur.

Just weeks before she and Muldoon boxed up Biden’s records, however, they received a Jan. 3, 2017, email from the National Security Council warning them not to pack anything classified and that “only unclassified personal records” could be removed from the White House at the end of the administration, noted Hur, who ultimately punted on indicting either of them, even for gross negligence.

A lawyer for Chung — who now serves as a top aide to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin — did not respond to requests for comment. Attempts to reach Muldoon were unsuccessful.
The issue of Hunter Biden’s cozy relationship with these aides could break into the open during Hur’s March 12 testimony on the Hill. Sources say lawmakers will press him on whether he investigated Hunter or his uncle Jim to see if either of them gained access to the stolen White House docs.

Last week, the House Oversight Committee, as part of its joint impeachment inquiry, subpoenaed the attorney general for Hur’s investigative files, including recovered classified documents about Ukraine and China. In a statement, the panel said it is “concerned that President Biden may have retained sensitive documents related to specific countries involving his family’s foreign business dealings.”

Paul Sperry is a senior investigative reporter for RealClearInvestigations. Follow him on X: @paulsperry_

HUNTER BIDEN INVESTIGATION EXPLAINED
Ann Marie Person and her brother shed light on relationship between Hunter’ business, Rosemont Seneca, and VP Biden’s office. Brother, sister duo worked for VP Biden and with Hunter’s investment firm

By Jessica Chasmar, Cameron Cawthorne Fox News, August 18, 2023

Hunter text claiming he paid Biden’s bills is further evidence of family’s corruption, GOP says
Fox News justice correspondent David Spunt reports on developments in the Hunter Biden investigation after Republicans uncover a text message from Hunter Biden claiming he paid his father’s bills for years.

A brother and sister who previously served as aides to then-Vice President Biden and have longstanding ties to Hunter Biden could be key witnesses if they were called to testify in the ongoing congressional investigations into the first family’s finances due to their intimate knowledge of the inner workings of Hunter’s firm and the VP’s office.

Anne Marie (Person) Muldoon and Francis “Fran” Person, who worked for Joe Biden for nearly a decade dating back to 2006, kept in frequent contact with Hunter Biden and Eric Schwerin, the then-president of Hunter’s now-dissolved investment firm Rosemont Seneca Partners, during their Obama-Biden administration roles using their government emails, Fox News Digital previously reported. Both siblings also served in the White House for VP Biden at the same time for a short period in 2014 until Fran left.

pic-—Fran Person
Joe Biden, right, and Fran Person, a former adviser to the then-vice president. (Fran Person/YouTube screenshot)

Anne Marie served as a general assistant and was copied on hundreds of emails at Hunter’s Rosemont Seneca from 2009 until she joined Biden’s staff as an assistant in May 2014 during the Obama administration. Her husband, Mike Muldoon, also worked at Rosemont Seneca from 2009 to 2011 before joining the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), according to emails from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop.

The emails she was included on ranged from itineraries for foreign trips, including China, day-to-day schedules for Hunter and Schwerin, to coordinating invitations for events and meetings at the White House.

link-—COMER DEMANDS NATIONAL ARCHIVES FORK OVER UNREDACTED EMAILS INVOLVING HUNTER BIDEN, UKRAINE, BURISMA

Anne Marie visited the Obama White House at least five times before she left Rosemont Seneca in 2014 to join Vice President Biden’s staff, according to White House visitor logs. During her time working for Biden, Anne Marie met with Schwerin at the White House at least four times between August 2015 and June 2016, a Fox News Digital review found.

Anne Marie also met in the West Wing with James Bulger in August 2016, visitor logs show, after Bulger and Hunter formed BHR Partners, which is controlled by the state-owned Bank of China and has connections to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

pic-—Vice President Joe Biden (L), Finnegan Biden (C) and Hunter Biden (R)
Vice President Joe Biden waves as he walks out of Air Force Two with his granddaughter, Finnegan Biden, and son Hunter Biden upon their arrival in Beijing on Dec. 4, 2013. (NG HAN GUAN/AFP via Getty Images)

link===HOUSE GOP RELEASES BANK RECORDS ON HUNTER BIDEN PAYMENTS FROM RUSSIAN, KAZAKH OLIGARCHS, TOTAL CLEARS $20M

Meanwhile, her brother Fran served as a personal aide to Biden for eight years through Biden’s latter Senate years, his 2008 campaign and his vice presidency, traveling to 49 of the 50 countries Biden traveled to between 2009 and 2014, including China and Serbia.

Fran left the White House in late July 2014 for an advisory role at his alma mater, the University of South Carolina. “Fran has been like a son to Joe and me,” then-second lady Jill Biden was quoted as saying in a 2014 Politico profile piece. “For eight years, we traveled the country, shared holidays together … Fran may be leaving the office, but he will always be a part of our family.”

Biden reflected on Person’s tenure working for him by saying, “In times of urgency, everyone from the Secret Service to my communications and policy teams, the first guy they go to is Fran.” He added, “People know that he has my ear whenever he wants it.”

Less than six months later in January 2015, Fran helped launch Harves Global Entertainment, an affiliate of the China-based Harves Century Group that has deep ties to the CCP.

pic——Fran Person’s campaign ad; a former adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, unsuccessfully ran for Congress in South Carolina’s 5th Congressional District in 2016. (Fran Person/YouTube screenshot)

Hunter’s company held financial interests in multiple Harves affiliates, including a 5% stake with Harves Amusement Parks and ownership in Harves Sports and Entertainment, both of which fall under Harves Group, according to 2017 emails on Hunter’s abandoned laptop from Schwerin.

Fran repeated his previous claim to Fox News Digital in an email Thursday, saying that neither Hunter nor any of his associates ever owned equity in any Harves entity or affiliate, despite multiple emails from Schwerin to Hunter contradicting this claim. A recent Washington Post fact check also noted that Rosemont Seneca Advisors had “a 5 percent stake in Harves Amusement Parks and ownership in Harves Sports and Entertainment, both in China.”

pic-—Hunter Biden’s business partner, Eric Schwerin, sent him an email in March 2017 listing Hunter’s LLC’s ownership interests and project descriptions, which included multiple Harves affiliates. (Fox News)

The Harves Entertainment website was taken down, and Fran deleted his Linkedin shortly after previous reporting last year. “Like many similar companies in the attractions industry affected during the global pandemic, Harves Global Entertainment’s operations shut down,” Fran claimed. “President Biden has never been a part of any business that I’ve conducted in any way ever.”

He did not respond to Fox News Digital’s questions about whether he was still involved with the Harves brand or whether the House Oversight Committee has been in contact with him about the investigation. After publication Friday, Fran sent an email saying, “the projects mentioned by Eric Schwerin in that email never passed the early deal stage and were never executed. Harves Amusement Parks entity never even existed.”

Fran has been pressed to provide more details about the Schwerin email in multiple inquiries and is coming forward for the first time to make the claim that these equity stakes “never passed the early deal stage.”

cont

link —— BIDEN’S NARRATIVE ON NEVER DISCUSSING BUSINESS DEALS WITH HUNTER CONTINUES TO CRUMBLE

“It is our duty on the oversight committee to fully investigate the president’s son’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party,” Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina previously said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “At this point, it is a matter of national security. I believe that it is in the best interest of the American people to call anyone tied to Hunter Biden and Bo Zhang to the stand and demand answers about the coordination between CCP officials and the Biden family.”

Bo Zhang, the Chinese executive who founded the Harves Group and whose father-in-law is the current Communist Party secretary of Hainan province, accompanied Fran in attending a White House holiday reception in December 2015.

pic-—Bo Zhang, pictured, met with Hunter Biden and Eric Schwerin several times while his business partner, Fran Person, was running for Congress in 2016. (Harves Investment Group/ YouTube Screenshot)

Fox News Digital reported in April that Person also visited the Obama-Biden White House at least seven times between 2015 and 2016 after he left the White House to work for Harves.

Person previously told Fox News Digital the White House visits were “personal in nature” and that he was “visiting with old colleagues and friends.”

link-—HUNTER BIDEN, FORMER BIDEN AIDE INVESTED IN CHINESE COMPANY TIED TO COMMUNIST PARTY, NBA CHINA

During his time at Harves, Fran launched a failed bid for Congress in South Carolina’s 5th Congressional District in 2016. While he was campaigning, Hunter and Schwerin were recruiting their business associates behind the scenes to donate thousands of dollars to Fran’s campaign, according to emails previously reported by Fox News Digital.

As a former top aide to then-Vice President Biden, Fran received an endorsement from Biden and enjoyed his presence at multiple fundraisers. During a September 2016 event in Fort Hill, South Carolina, Biden said Person has the “heart of a lion” and a “moral compass that has a true north.”

Hunter and Schwerin were also simultaneously working behind the scenes to secure business deals for his company in China, Fox News previously reported.

Hunter Biden introduced his “good friend and business colleague” Bo Zhang in May 2016 to a Chinese business associate of his and mentioned a potential “partnership” between Harvest and Harves. (Fox News)

Fran Person’s campaign received $2,700 each from Schwerin and Hunter, including $1,000 from Jill Biden. Zhang and his mother, Jinglan Shao, the chairwoman of the China-based Harves Century Group, both maxed out to Fran’s campaign with two $2,700 donations each.

pic-—Joe Biden (L) embraces son Hunter
President Biden embraces son Hunter and family members after taking the oath of office during his swearing-in ceremony at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC., on Jan. 20, 2021. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

link-—HUNTER BIDEN HELPED FORMER BIDEN AIDE WITH HOUSE CAMPAIGN WHILE WORKING WITH HIS CCP-TIED BUSINESS PARTNER

The earliest email that Fox News Digital has reviewed involving Hunter and the Harves Group dates back to July 2015, when Person, then the president of the Harves Group, invited him to meet Zhang and his family in China. Neither Person or Zhang have been implicated in any professional or criminal misconduct.

“Bo Zhang and his family would host us,” Person wrote in the email. “They are a great family with great respect and relationships in China. Bo graduated from American Univ and is in his late 20’s, and his parents own Harves Century Group of Shenyang - which is a top tier private chinese real estate development firm.”

‘MONEY GUY’: THIS HUNTER BIDEN BUSINESS PARTNER COULD BLOW LID OFF BIDEN FAMILY’S BUSINESS DEALINGS

pic——Hunter Biden and Schwerin split image
Hunter Biden, left, and Eric Schwerin. (Fox News)

Person’s email went on to say that Zhang is “being groomed to take over his family’s dynasty” and that the trip wasn’t about selling Biden on anything, but more about “grow[ing] that relationship,” adding that “there will be plenty of big things that come down the road that we can work on.”

“His mom is actually the Chairman of the company, which is unique in China,” Person wrote. “They are very private, and wouldn’t tell anyone about you coming. Bo’s father-in-law is actually the Governor of Hainan (Chinese Hawaii), which he doesn’t advertise at all.”

link===ERIC SCHWERIN’S ROLE IN HUNTER BIDEN’S CHINESE BUSINESS DEALS COULD BE MISSING KEY IN GOP INVESTIGATIONS

Francis Person email to HUNTER BIDEN——In July 2015, Fran Person invited Hunter Biden to China for a week to meet Bo Zhang and his family, noting that Bo Zhang was being “groomed to take over his family’s dynasty” in China. (Fox News)

Zhang’s father-in-law, Liu Cigui, was later elected as the Communist Party secretary of the Hainan province in 2017 and is considered a “loyalist” of Chinese President Xi Jinping........multiple emails reviewed by Fox News Digital showed that Person and Zhang had met with Hunter and Schwerin after that email and discussed Harves-related business opportunities on numerous occasions In Washington, D.C.

The White House and Anne Marie did not respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.This story has been updated to include Person’s comment.

Jessica Chasmar is an editor on the politics team for Fox News and Fox Business. Story tips can be sent to Jessica.Chasmar@fox.com.

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