This article, first published in 2021, has been updated.<\/p>\n
When the New York Post released emails last fall from what it claimed was Hunter Biden\u2019s laptop, The Fact Checker produced an explainer that turned out to be one of the most-read articles in our 13-year history. A key question we examined was whether Hunter Biden, President Biden\u2019s son, arranged for a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm to meet with the then-vice president when he was in charge of U.S. policy toward Ukraine. The date in question: April 16, 2015.<\/p>\n
A campaign spokesman for Joe Biden had said a review of Biden\u2019s schedule for that day found no record of any such meeting. Officials who worked for him in 2015 also told The Fact Checker that no such meeting took place.<\/p>\n
Recently, a reader directed our attention to a May 26 New York Post report, featuring more emails, that was headlined: \u201cHunter Biden brought VP Joe to dinner with shady business partners.\u201d The article suggested Joe Biden met with the Burisma executive, Vadym Pozharskyi, at a dinner that was held in the private \u201cgarden room\u201d at Cafe Milano in Washington.<\/p>\n
The reader, in a phone message, said it was time to update our report because new details had emerged from the laptop about the vice president\u2019s movements that day. As the New York Post put it, \u201cThe dinner raises questions about how much Joe Biden, who has claimed ignorance of his son\u2019s activities, knew about Hunter\u2019s dealings with foreign businesses and government officials.\u201d<\/p>\n
But when we looked into it, there was less to the story than one might imagine.<\/p>\n
Hunter Biden at the time was chairman of World Food Program USA, a fundraising arm of the U.N. humanitarian organization. Rick Leach, at the time the president and chief executive of WFP USA, said in a telephone interview that Joe Biden only dropped by briefly to meet with one of the guests, Alex Karloutsos, known as Father Alex. Until his recent retirement, Karloutsos was one of the most powerful figures in the Greek Orthodox Church in the United States.<\/p>\n
A few hours earlier, Joe Biden had made remarks at the White House Greek Independence Day Reception, according to his official schedule. He and Karloutsos are personal friends who have known each other for 40 years. Karloutsos\u2019s wife, Xanthi, is on the board of the Beau Biden Foundation, which fights child abuse. (Beau Biden, who had an aggressive form of brain cancer, died a few weeks after this dinner.)<\/p>\n
Joe Biden, a Roman Catholic, also has a long history of working with the Greek Orthodox Church. In 2015, the church awarded him the Patriarch Athenagoras Humanitarian Award. \u201cThis may be the greatest honor I\u2019ve ever received in my public life,\u201d he declared.<\/p>\n
Leach recalled that the dinner involved about 10 to 12 people in a private room but that Joe Biden \u201cdidn\u2019t even sit down. He was not part of the dinner or part of the dinner discussion.\u201d Instead, he just spoke to Karloutsos.<\/p>\n
Karloutsos, in an email, confirmed Leach\u2019s account. \u201cThat is true. It was very kind of the then VP to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Update, Aug. 3, 2023: In an interview with congressional investigators on July 31, Hunter Biden\u2019s former business partner Devon Archer, asked specifically about this report, disputed those recollections that Biden spoke only to Karloutsos. \u201cI remember just a regular dinner where there was a table of conversation and \u2014 you know, talked about the World Food Program probably,\u201d he said, adding, \u201cThere was no business-deals specifics discussed ever at any of these things.\u201d)<\/p>\n
(Update, March 1, 2024: In his own interview with congressional investigators, Hunter Biden disputed Archer\u2019s recollection that the vice president spent significant time at the meal. Instead his account more closely matched that of Leach and Karloutsos \u2014 that Joe Biden spoke mainly to Karloutsos.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy dad did not come for dinner,\u201d he said, according to a transcript released Feb. 29, 2024. \u201cHe came and sat down at the presentations. He sat down next to Father Alex, who he\u2019s known for almost 42 years, who was a close family friend. And I believe that he probably had a Coca-Cola and a bowl of spaghetti, maybe, and then got up and gave Xanthi a hug and Michael [her son] a hug, walked out, shook hands to the people that were sitting on the table.\u201d)<\/p>\n
Leach described Hunter Biden as an active board chairman of WFP USA. He said the two of them had a \u201ctag-team presentation\u201d as they made a pitch at various events for food assistance. One Hunter Biden email before the dinner remarked that \u201cthe reason for the dinner is ostensibly to discuss food security,\u201d the New York Post said. But Leach said that was indeed the focus of the discussion. At the dinner, \u201cthere was no discussion of politics or business about anything or anywhere,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Leach said he found the introduction to Karloutsos to be helpful, and he later followed up with a meeting in New York. At the time, Greece was flooded with refugees from Syria, and Leach was eager to get the church involved. The New York Post article quotes an email from Leach to Hunter Biden later that night: \u201cWhat a fantastic and productive evening \u2014 thank you!\u201d<\/p>\n
One mystery is why the drop-by was not listed on Joe Biden\u2019s schedule. Not everything is always listed on a presidential or vice-presidential schedule. But the New York Post quotes from an email from Hunter Biden to Karloutsos\u2019s son, Michael, on March 26: \u201cDad will be there but keep that between us for now.\u201d<\/p>\n
A White House individual with knowledge of Joe Biden\u2019s schedules said the decision to see Father Alex was made late that day, after the schedule was completed. It\u2019s unclear when the vice president learned Father Alex would be in town, but the decision was made that evening, the person added.<\/p>\n
A tentative guest list for the event, as recounted in the New York Post from one of Hunter Biden\u2019s emails three weeks before the dinner, did not include Pozharskyi. So it\u2019s still unclear how the vice president could have met him, unless he was a last-minute addition. (Alex Karloutsos also is not included on that early list.) The Biden campaign, after a comprehensive review, had said a meeting never took place between Joe Biden and Pozharskyi. (Update, June 8, 2021: In a tweet condemning this article, the author of the New York Post story asserts that a \u201cVadym\u201d on the tentative guest list refers to Pozharskyi, though no last name is listed. Update, Aug. 3, 2023: Archer told investigators Pozharskyi attended the dinner. Update, March 1, 2024: Hunter Biden said his father greeted Pozharskyi: \u201cVadym was one of the people sitting at the table, and he said hello to them.\u201d)<\/p>\n
The tentative guest list does include \u201c3 seats for our KZ [Kazakhstan] friends.\u201d An unverified, undated and fuzzy photo emerged in November on a Kazakh website showing Joe Biden in a meet-and-greet photo with Hunter Biden, flanked by Kenes Rakishev, a Kazakh businessman, and Karim Massimov, a former prime minister of Kazakhstan. The Daily Mail reported in October that Hunter Biden had business dealings with Rakishev between 2012 and 2014. (Update, Aug. 3, 2023: Archer told investigators Rakishev did not attend this dinner but had attended one at Cafe Milano a year earlier. He said Massimov was at this meal. Update, March 1, 2024: Hunter Biden said he was not sure: \u201cI don\u2019t know who was at which dinner exactly when.\u201d)<\/p>\n
Whether the photo, if genuine, was taken at the dinner is unclear.<\/p>\n
\u201cI recall that [Vice President Biden] engaged directly with Father Alex, who appeared to be a personal friend,\u201d Leach said. \u201cI do not recall any photos being taken or whether he spoke directly with anyone else at the table.\u201d<\/p>\n
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This article, first published in 2021, has been updated. When the New York Post released emails last fall from what it claimed was Hunter Biden\u2019s laptop, The Fact Checker produced an explainer that turned out to be one of the most-read articles in our 13-year history. A key question we examined was whether Hunter Biden, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1672,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}