Hunter Biden explored getting job at Penn Biden Center before it even existed
The Penn Biden Center lies at the heart of the latest Biden controversy but in some ways remains shrouded by mystery.
The White House revealed earlier this week that classified documents were discovered at the Washington, D.C. office for President Biden’s think tank, the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, in early November. On Wednesday, news broke that another trove of classified documents from Biden’s time as vice president had been discovered at another location, leading to louder calls for Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special counsel to investigate the president’s handling of such documents.
The Biden Center has since found itself in the middle of a firestorm, leading to renewed questions on the likes of Chinese donations to the University of Pennsylvania, which houses the think tank. Hunter Biden is also shown to have discussed the center in emails before its launch.
Within weeks of leaving the vice presidency under former President Barack Obama in January 2017, Biden became the “Benjamin Franklin Presidential Practice Professor” at the University of Pennsylvania, an honorary position, and the “Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement” was launched in Washington, D.C. the next year.
However, discussions about the elder Biden’s future involvement with Penn long predated the end of the Obama presidency, according to emails from Hunter Biden’s infamous abandoned laptop, which have been verified by Fox News Digital.
On April 25, 2016, Creative Artists Agency (CAA) agent Craig Gering emailed Hunter with “confidential notes from our meeting,” in which Gering listed apparent plans that were discussed for the vice president upon leaving office.
One of those plans included “wealth creation,” with no further explanation, and another included an apparent reference to the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C., with a possible job opportunity for Hunter.
“The Biden Institute of Foreign Relations at the University of Pennsylvania,” Gering’s email read. “Focus on foreign policy. In addition to the institute at U of Penn, the school has an existing office in DC that will be expanded to house a DC office for VP Biden (and Mike, Hunter and Steve?). Operates like The Clinton Global Initiative without the money raise.”
Hunter then confirmed Gering’s notes but emphasized that they needed to be “very confidential” because they were not set in stone.
“Yes,” Hunter replied, “in theory that’s the way I would like to see it shake out— BUT please keep this very confidential between us because nothing has been set in stone and there’s still a lot of sensitivity around all of this both internally and externally. He hasn’t made any decisions and this could all be changed overnight.”
Hunter Biden confirms Craig Gering notes. (Fox News)
Just 10 days earlier, Hunter was scheduled to attend a meeting with his father and then-university President Amy Gutmann, according to an email of Hunter’s schedule from Rosemont Seneca Vice President Joan Mayer. It is not clear if the meeting at the White House actually took place, but it was scheduled almost exactly one year after Hunter and his then-wife Kathleen hosted Gutmann for a private dinner at Cafe Milano, a Georgetown institution in Washington D.C., according to an April 2015 email from a Penn official to Kathleen and Hunter. The guest list “comprised of Academy Members (significant donors), trustees, Overseers, and Penn parents” from UPenn, another email read.
Joan Mayer email to Hunter Biden (Fox News)
Hunter’s lawyer and the White House did not respond to Fox News Digital inquiries on the matter.
Joe Biden left the vice presidency on Jan. 20, 2017, and was hired as a professor at Penn less four weeks after that, where he was paid a total of $776,527 in 2017 and 2018, which was nearly double what full-time Penn professors made during the same time, Philadelphia magazine reported in 2019.
The magazine reported at the time that the former vice president’s professorship was “really more of speaking residency,” and that, “[h]e’s been on campus so infrequently that it becomes news when he actually is there,” which was a total of six times.