Biden family associate Eric Schwerin told congressional impeachment investigators Tuesday that he provided free financial services to President Biden during his vice presidency while doing business with his son Hunter.
A source familiar with Schwerin’s testimony said he described performing without charge money-related tasks including bookkeeping, paying bills, and preparing taxes and official financial disclosure forms for the then-VP.
The rarely seen Schwerin didn’t address the press during his trip to Capitol Hill for a closed-door deposition with House members and lawyers looking into alleged corruption in the first family.
Schwerin testified that despite being one of Hunter Biden’s closest associates, he knew little about the details of payments from benefactors in China, Kazakhstan, Romania, Russia and Ukraine, the source said.
However, Schwerin’s testimony still could advance Republican claims that Joe Biden misrepresented his distance from his relatives’ business dealings.
As a candidate in 2019, Biden said: “What I will do is the same thing we did in our administration. There will be an absolute wall between personal and private [business] and the government. There wasn’t any hint of scandal at all when we were there.”
A second person familiar with Schwerin’s remarks said that he insisted he provided his services to Joe Biden as a friend and that the favors were unrelated to his work with Hunter Biden.
Some details of Schwerin’s testimony were not immediately known — such as what he may have said about communications with Joe Biden using email addresses registered to pseudonyms for the then-vice president.
Joe Biden swapped emails at least 54 times with Schwerin during his vice presidency, according to prior disclosures — as then-second son Hunter Biden courted business from countries where his father held sway, such as China and Ukraine.
Some of the emails were sent at roughly the same time that Joe Biden was making official trips to Ukraine as the head of US policy — while Hunter was earning a $1 million salary sitting on the board of natural gas company Burisma Holdings beginning in the spring of 2014
Schwerin was president of Hunter Biden’s Rosemont Seneca Partners, which was created in 2009 and served as one vehicle through which Hunter earned foreign income.
Republicans leading the impeachment inquiry were expected to ask Schwerin about whether any foreign funds flowed even indirectly to Joe Biden, as well as about the contents of their emails, which are not fully known.
In a prepared opening statement, Schwerin said that he was “not aware of” Joe Biden receiving foreign money.
“I performed a number of administrative and bookkeeping tasks for then-Vice President Joe Biden related to his household finances. I also helped him and his accountants in their preparation of his taxes and his annual financial disclosure statements,” the prepared statement said.
“In the course of performing these duties, I had the ability to view transactions both into and out of Vice President Biden’s bank accounts while he was Vice President. Based on that insight, 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 nor any involvement by him in their businesses.”
Legal experts say that a government official doesn’t necessarily have to receive compensation directly if their relatives were being paid.
Schwerin also handled “almost every aspect” of the financial affairs of Hunter Biden’s family, the first son’s ex-wife Kathleen Buhle wrote in her 2022 memoir.
The elder Biden’s links to Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company, include attending an April 2015 dinner in DC with company board adviser Vadym Pozharskyi and Hunter’s associates from Russia and Kazakhstan.
Hunter Biden, joined by Pozharskyi and Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky, also stepped away from a Dubai gathering in December 2015 to “call DC” shortly before one of the then-VP’s trips to Ukraine, former Biden family associate Devon Archer testified in July.
Republicans leading the impeachment inquiry are expected to ask Schwerin about whether any foreign funds flowed to Joe Biden, as well as about the contents of their emails, which are not fully known.
Some of the emails were sent at roughly the same time that Joe Biden was making official trips to Ukraine as the head of US policy — while Hunter was earning a $1 million salary sitting on the board of natural gas company Burisma Holdings beginning in the spring of 2014
The elder Biden’s links to Burisma include attending an April 2015 dinner in DC with company board adviser Vadym Pozharskyi and Hunter’s associates from Russia and Kazakhstan.
Hunter Biden, joined by Pozharskyi and Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky, also stepped away from a Dubai gathering to “call DC” shortly before one of the then-VP’s trips to Ukraine, former Biden family associate Devon Archer testified in July.
Archer said he understood the comment to mean they were calling Joe Biden.
Zlochevsky allegedly told a paid FBI informant in 2016 that he was “coerced” into paying $10 million in bribes to the Bidens in exchange for the vice president’s help in ousting Ukrainian prosecutor-general Viktor Shokin, who was investigating the company for corruption. The allegation has not been proven.
Joe Biden also interacted multiple times with Kyiv’s longtime mayor Vitali Klitschko, who was the “core shareholder” and a participant in a Hunter Biden-chaired subsidiary called Burisma Geothermal, according to records from Hunter’s abandoned laptop that were corroborated to The Post by a former business associate.
Schwerin’s deposition follows last week’s testimony by Biden family associate Rob Walker, who revealed that Joe Biden met in 2017 with Ye Jianming, chairman of CEFC China Energy, which paid Hunter Biden and his uncle James millions of dollars shortly after Joe Biden left office as vice president.
Prior testimony revealed that Joe Biden, despite claiming he “never” discussed business with his son or brother and “did not” interact with their partners, engaged with their foreign associates in most high-profile dealings abroad.
Archer further testified that Joe Biden was on speakerphone during roughly 20 business meetings between his son and foreign associates.
Archer also said the then-VP had coffee during a 2013 trip to Beijing with Jonathan Li, the incoming CEO of BHR Partners — a state-backed Chinese investment fund in which Hunter held a 10% stake through at least 2021. Joe Biden subsequently greeted Li over speakerphone, Archer said, and wrote college recommendation letters for his children.
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