Biden insists he's not involved in his family's business dealings. But his aides are a different story.

For years, Joe Biden shared a bookkeeper with his son, Hunter. He also shared a personal lawyer with his brother, Jim. And when Jim Biden wanted to know more about one of Hunter Biden’s associates, he hired the former head of Joe Biden’s Secret Service detail to investigate.

Since 2019, Joe Biden has repeatedly distanced himself from his family’s business dealings, saying that he has never so much as discussed them with his relatives or with anyone else. But House impeachment inquiry interviews, public records and emails reviewed by POLITICO show that members of his inner circle were regularly enmeshed in those dealings: Many of the president’s closest staffers and advisers have doubled as his relatives’ business associates, both during and after their stints working for the man at the center of the Biden family orbit.

Those overlaps reflect an all-in-the family approach to business and politicking that dates back a half-century to the president’s first Senate bid, run primarily by his parents and siblings. Since then, his political patrons have at times forged business ties with his relatives, who in turn have converted some of their business partners into campaign supporters. And over a lifetime in public life, some of the president’s aides have taken on roles as surrogate members of the tight-knit Biden clan.

The Bidens’ approach complicates their efforts to distance the president from his family’s ventures. 

As Jim and Hunter Biden’s foreign dealings have caused controversy and several of their business partners have been convicted of federalfraud and corruption crimes in recent years, any potential links between their business dealings and the president have come in for renewed scrutiny.

To allay concerns about any intermingling of their affairs, the Bidens have said that they observe strict interpersonal firewalls to avoid discussing business among themselves.

But with so many former and current aides in the mix — and with the surfacing of private communications in which Jim and Hunter Biden suggest they represent their powerful relative in business matters — onlookers are forced to take family members at their word that those firewalls always held.

In one instance, Jim Biden testified that he hired the former head of his brother’s Secret Service detail, Dale Pupillo, to investigate a Chinese executive that Hunter Biden was doing business with in 2017.

Jim Biden said during his February impeachment inquiry interview that he commissioned Pupillo in advance of accompanying Hunter Biden to Hong Kong so that his nephew could meet with the executive, Patrick Ho.

Despite hiring a private investigator and traveling halfway around the world for the meeting, Jim Biden said he never asked Hunter Biden what Ho — then on the cusp of being arrested, and later convicted, on federal corruption charges — and his nephew were meeting about. He said the decision not to inquire about the meeting came down to a desire to quarantine his affairs from those of his nephew’s.

“That may be hard for you to believe,” he told an incredulous Republican staffer. “But that’s the way we operate in my family.”

It is unclear whether the president’s current or former staffers are presently involved in his relatives’ business affairs. Neither the White House, representatives for Jim and Hunter Biden, nor the president’s current or former aides responded to requests for comment.

THE BODYGUARD

In a three-decade career in the Secret Service, Pupillo climbed the ranks and eventually oversaw vice presidential protection for both Dick Cheney and Joe Biden.

A series of scandals at the agency led to a high-profile shakeup that saw Pupillo — by then assistant director for protective operations — demoted in 2015 along with other top Secret Service leaders.

After retiring from government, Pupillo remained friendly with Jim Biden, the president’s brother testified at his impeachment inquiry interview.

Then, in 2017, Hunter Biden asked his uncle to accompany him to Hong Kong for a meeting with Ho, an executive working on behalf of the Chinese energy firm CEFC, according to the interview transcript.

At the time, Jim and Hunter Biden had been working with CEFC to help the company source potential energy projects.

In the course of those dealings, hundreds of thousands of dollars flowed from accounts associated with CEFC and its then-chairman, Ye Jianming, to accounts associated with Jim and Hunter Biden, according to findings, based on subpoenaed bank records, released in recent years by congressional Republicans.

Hunter Biden has testified that his dealings with CEFC were “completely legitimate and completely, 100 percent in line with my experience and my abilities,” and Jim Biden has described the episode as “a straightforward business venture.”  

In advance of the trip, Jim Biden testified, he hired Pupillo to investigate Ho. “I wanted to know who I was meeting with and if there were any complications at all,” he said.

Pupillo’s background check came back clean, Jim Biden testified.

At the time, Ho was under Justice Department investigation for bribing African officials to advance CEFC’s interests, a fact that came to light soon after the Hong Kong meeting when Ho was arrested upon arrival in New York, and later convicted, on corruption charges.

The hiring of Pupillo and the purpose of the Hong Kong meeting was subjected to extended scrutiny in Jim Biden’s congressional interview.

A Republican staffer voiced a suspicion that the real reason Pupillo was hired was to provide intelligence about the Justice Department’s probe that could then be communicated to Ho face-to-face.

“Was this person used to investigate Patrick Ho to try and identify whether or not there was a federal investigation before you and Hunter Biden went out to go visit Patrick Ho so that you could inform Patrick Ho if there was an indictment or a federal investigation, maybe, that was under seal?” the staffer asked.

“Absolutely not,” Jim Biden responded. “This was for my personal edification, because I do not like to walk into blind buildings, okay?”

Jim Biden also volunteered his belief that Pupillo did not exploit any access to sensitive sources in his investigation. “He didn't use any special, you know, relationships,” Jim Biden testified. “To the best of my knowledge, he was a very ethical guy.”

He added, though, that he did not know how Pupillo vetted Ho. “What means did he use to gain this knowledge? I have no idea,” Jim Biden testified. “He's a professional. He's a friend.”

Jim Biden, though, said he did not know what the purpose of the Hong Kong meeting was. He said he participated in the trip only to provide support for his troubled nephew and that he never asked about the substance of his meeting with Ho.

“It's odd,” suggested a Republican staffer, “that you would go to such lengths to hire a private investigator to look into Patrick Ho, but then you wouldn't even just ask Hunter Biden, your relative, like, ‘why are we going and who is this guy?’”

“The way that we deal in my family, it wasn't odd,” Jim Biden responded. “To others it might be.”

THE LAWYER

For Jim Biden, the habit of tapping his older brother’s associates for business help dates back to Joe Biden’s first Senate term.

In 1975, Joe Biden’s old law firm, Walsh, Monzack & Owens, arranged an unsecured loan for Jim Biden’s Delaware nightclub business from politically connected financier Norman Rales. A 1978 article about the arrangement in Wilmington’s Sunday News Journal reported that after entering the Senate, Joe Biden remained financially entangled with his old law partners, who owed him $85,000 for his stake in the firm.

In the years since, one of those law partners, Mel Monzack, has gone on to serve as Joe Biden’s personal attorney and at times as his campaign treasurer.

His current firm, Monzack, Mersky and Browder, serves as the registered agent of Joe Biden’s personal S Corporation, CelticCapri, which was formed in 2017, according to Delaware corporate records. Biden has routed income from activities including writing and speaking through CelticCapri, according to his personal financial disclosures.

In recent years, Monzack, who did not respond to requests for comment, has also served as Jim Biden’s personal attorney, according to the younger Biden’s testimony.

That’s complicated at least one controversy about the extent to which Joe Biden’s relatives have involved him in their business dealings.

POLITICO previously reported on the accounts of three former executives at Americore, a troubled hospital chain that Jim Biden worked closely with, who said that Jim Biden spoke of various plans to involve his older brother in the company.

One of the executives told POLITICO that Jim Biden, who was negotiating for a large equity stake in Americore in 2018, said at the time that his older brother would get a piece of the company, too.

When asked about the executive’s account during his congressional testimony, the younger Biden’s response was adamant.

“That is ridiculous on its face,” he told investigators. While there was talk of an equity deal, he said, Joe Biden had nothing to with it.

Joe Biden’s personal attorney is another matter.

A June 2018 email shows that Monzack helped negotiate a proposed deal that would have given Jim Biden’s company 35 percent of Americore.

In the email, part of a cache of internal Americore documents obtained exclusively by POLITICO, Monzack wrote to Americore’s outside counsel, “We represent Jim Biden and Lion Hall Group,” and requested a half-dozen changes to the proposed deal.

The email’s recipient, Christopher Anderson, formerly of Jones Day, did not respond to requests for comment.

Jim Biden testified that he walked away from the equity deal over concerns about Americore’s finances. The White House did not respond to a question about Monzack, and Jim Biden told congressional investigators he does not know the full extent of Monzack’s legal work for his brother.

“I don't have the full depth of what he does or doesn't do,” Jim Biden told investigators. “But I know that he's intricately involved and has been, you know, for the last 40 or 50 years.”

THE BODY MAN

In Joe Biden’s final years in the Senate, and for most of his vice presidency, Fran Person was by his side as body man and confidant. Known as “Franny” in Biden’s inner circle, Person was “like a son” to Joe and Jill Biden, the future first ladytold POLITICO in 2014.

During his time in the vice president’s office, Person kept Hunter Biden in the loop on the details of his father’s movements, according to Hunter Biden’s leaked emails, obtained by POLITICO.

Emails show that Person also occasionally consulted Hunter Biden on political questions, including discussion of which labor leaders to invite to the vice president's second-term swearing-in in 2013.

After leaving government in 2014, Person went into business with Harves Corporation, a Chinese real estate developer, according to the emails.

Person was soon working to line up deals with Hunter Biden, according to the emails, which show him pitching his former boss’s son on a plan to develop SeaWorld parks in China in conjunction with Harves and the state-owned China Development Bank in 2015.

A series of WhatsApp messages between Person and Hunter Biden from the summer of 2017 show that discussions of potential partnerships lasted for years and included offers of personal financial help for Hunter Biden from Person’s Chinese business partner, Harves executive Bo Zhang.

The messages were included in an exhibit provided to the House Ways and Means Committee by IRS special agent Joseph Ziegler, who investigated Hunter Biden’s tax matters. Ziegler said in an affidavit that the WhatsApp messages summarized in the exhibit were obtained via search warrants.

In the messages, Hunter Biden detailed his daunting personal debts, while Person expressed a desire to work with Hunter Biden and said that Zhang was eager to provide the financially distressed political scion with monetary assistance.

“I've got one loyalty brother. That's to my family. Your family,” Person, who did not respond to requests for comment, wrote in one July 27, 2017, message. “I talked to Bo previously about the 37K — he didn't flinch. I will talk to him about 56K and possibly 100K. It really depends on his liquid assets in the US … I will ask. His only problem is getting large sums out of China (especially right now)."

Neither Zhang nor a lawyer who recently represented him in an unrelated lawsuit, Jonathan Pavony of Squire Patton Boggs, responded to requests for comment.

The next day, Hunter Biden asked if money had been sent, the messages show. In response, Person assured him that Zhang had just been to the bank and extended an invitation on his Chinese partner’s behalf.

“He also mentioned,” Person wrote, “that you should take a trip to China some time this month to just get away for a week or so … just decompress." The messages do not make clear how much money, if any, Hunter Biden ultimately received from Zhang.

THE BOOKKEEPER

During his vice presidency, Joe Biden leaned on his son’s business partner, Eric Schwerin, to manage his personal finances.

Schwerin, who met Hunter Biden when they both worked in the Clinton Administration’s Commerce Department, went on to work as his lobbying partner.

At the beginning of the Obama administration, the pair co-founded Rosemont Seneca Partners, an investment and consulting firm. Schwerin also oversaw Rosemont’s finances and helped manage Hunter Biden’s personal finances. In those roles, Schwerin participated in and managed the tax implications of some of Hunter Biden’s controversial overseas dealings.

During the Obama years, Schwerin took over Joe Biden’s bookkeeping as well, he told congressional impeachment investigators in January, saying that the volunteer role entailed bill-paying and tax preparation.

Schwerin testified that Hunter Biden did not cover expenses for his father. “I do not recall anything,” he said. “It's possible there were small things here and there, but I don't recall anything major.” Schwerin added that Hunter Biden paid for a family cell phone plan used by his father and that his father would reimburse him for it.

Meanwhile, Schwerin’s day job kept him involved in Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings.

In one episode, Schwerin referred Burisma — a Ukrainian energy firm that installed Hunter Biden on its board in 2014 as it navigated corruption allegations — to the Democratic lobbying firm Blue Star Strategies for help with government relations, according to his testimony.

The referral worked out. Blue Star helped Burisma fend off a corruption investigation in Ukraine, before its work with the energy firm itself became the subject of a Justice Department probe. Blue Star belatedly registered as a foreign agent, but the DOJ probe was reportedly closed with no finding of wrongdoing.

In his testimony, Schwerin said that he saw no intermingling between the then-vice president’s finances and his relatives’ business ventures. “I am not aware of any financial transactions or compensation that Vice President Biden received related to business conducted by any of his family members or their associates,” he said, “nor any involvement by him in their businesses.”

THE DOCTOR

As the vice president’s physician during the Obama administration, army doctor Kevin O’Connor grew close to his primary patient. Bonds with the rest of the Bidens deepened over the course of the Obama administration as O’Connor — who now serves as Biden’s White House physician — assisted in the treatment of Beau Biden’s fatal brain cancer.

In 2017, when Jim Biden sought to build a healthcare empire in conjunction with Americore, he enlisted O’Connor’s help, according to emails obtained by POLITICO and Jim Biden’s impeachment inquiry interview.

As part of his work with Americore, Jim Biden wanted to partner with the Veterans Affairs Department to use vacant space at rural hospitals to treat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, according to his testimony.

As an example of the value he brought to Americore, Jim Biden testified that he sought help from O’Connor, who introduced him to a team of people involved in treating PTSD on military bases. “Our first lunch was in Alexandria, Virginia,” he testified. It is unclear whether the initiative progressed beyond initial talks. O’Connor did not respond to a request for comment left with him at George Washington University, where he is listed as an associate professor, and the White House did not respond to a request to make him available for an interview.

Emails obtained by POLITICO show that Jim Biden and O’Connor also met with the head of a Pennsylvania hospital that Americore was in the process of acquiring in July of 2017. “You and your team clearly share our vision,” O’Connor wrote to the hospital administrator, Beverly Annarumo, after the meeting, copying Jim Biden on the note. “And I look forward to seeing you again in coming months.”