Business Insider said Thursday that two previously unpublished emails sent by business contacts of Hunter Biden – the son of the US President Joe Biden, indicated that the president’s son requested an annual retainer of $2 million to help recover billions in Libyan assets frozen by the Obama administration.
The emails, obtained by Business Insider during reporting on an unrelated matter, are not connected to the controversial emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop, which his supporters have claimed were distributed as part of a disinformation campaign.
“While it appears from the new emails that the Libya deal was never consummated, the documents offer a window into the mechanics of Beltway influence peddling, and the stock that was put in Biden’s political connections — particularly his relationship with his father, who was vice president at the time.” The website added.
“The first email, dated January 28, 2015, was sent from Sam Jauhari, a Democratic donor with businesses in the Persian Gulf, who was helping spearhead the Libya project. It was addressed to Sheikh Mohammed al-Rahbani, another Obama campaign donor involved in the proposal. In the email, Jauhari is frank about what Biden would bring to the table, and what he says Biden wanted in return.” Business Insider exclusively reported.
It also said that Biden’s apparent offer to provide “access to the highest level” in the Chinese government is also telling.
“Such access may, in fact, have been worth the price that Biden was cited as quoting. Two people close to the negotiations told Insider that the “$2 per year retainer” mentioned in the email meant $2 million.” IT added,
“My recollection was that anything that had to do with Hunter started at $2 million,” said one Jauhari and his partners, according to other documents obtained by Insider, expected to pocket as much as 5% of whatever sanctioned money they could free up for Libya. That meant a possible payday in the hundreds of millions. It’s unclear whether any “success fees” for Biden would have been pegged in some way to those proceeds.” Business Insider added.
The second email, dated February 26, 2016, indicates that the talks with Biden continued into the following year. In it, Jauhari and al-Rahbani receive a report by John Sandweg, a Washington lawyer who had served as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under Obama. Sandweg had reached out to Biden’s team about the Libya deal.
