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FIRST ON FOX: Hunter Biden’s longtime business partner Eric Schwerin visited the White House at least eight times in 2016, meeting with then-Vice President Biden’s chief of staff Steve Ricchetti, who currently serves as Biden’s White House counselor, and an assistant in Biden’s office who used to work at the investment firm Schwerin and Hunter managed.
Those eight additional visits, in addition to 19 previously known Schwerin visits, bring his total number of White House visits during the Obama-Biden administration to 27.
Schwerin, the president of since-dissolved investment fund Rosemont Seneca Partners, visited Ricchetti at least twice in 2016. The two visits occurred in room 272 on Feb. 29 and room 276 on Aug. 17 at the Old Executive Office Building (OEOB), according to the 2016 White House visitor logs.
Ricchetti has been a longtime adviser to President Biden and served as his chief of staff from 2013 to 2017. He now serves as Biden’s White House counselor.
Schwerin also met with Anne Marie Person, who served as a general assistant at Rosemont until 2014 before joining Biden’s office, at least three times between February and June 2016, a Fox News Digital review found. According to White House visitor logs, Schwerin met her in Biden’s “West Wi[ng]” office on Feb. 24, April 8, and June 9. It is unclear if Biden was present for the meetings.
Counselor to the President Steve Ricchetti gestures after playing a round of golf with US President Joe Biden at Wilmington Country Club in Wilmington, Delaware on April 17, 2021. – President Joe Biden played golf for the first time in his presidency Saturday, hitting the fairways in his home city of Wilmington. (Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)
Person is not only a former assistant at Rosemont Seneca Partners, but she is also the sister of Francis “Fran” Person, a longtime Biden aide who left the White House a few months after she joined Biden’s office in May 2014. He served as an advisor to Biden between 2009 and 2014, where he traveled to 49 of the 50 countries Biden visited, including China. FOX Business previously reported on Fran’s ties to Hunter Biden and Schwerin and how their private equity firm had a financial stake in a company run by Fran and a Chinese executive with ties to officials at some of the highest levels of the Communist Party of China.
Both Person siblings kept in frequent contact with Hunter and Schwerin during their Obama-Biden administration roles using their government emails, according to emails reviewed by Fox News Digital.
In addition to Person and Ricchetti, Schwerin made three other visits with staffers from Vice President Biden’s office in 2016. Schwerin met with John McGrail, who was a counselor to Biden, on July 15 and Sept. 9 at the White House. He also met with Kaitlyn Demers, who was serving as an associate counsel in Biden’s office in 2016, on June 28. She is currently a special assistant to President Biden and Chief of Staff Ron Klain.
Hunter Biden’s most prominent investment partner had an official sit-down with Vice President Joe Biden in 2010, but Americans who rely on ABC, CBS and NBC for information would have no idea. (Screenshot)
The new revelations follow a New York Post report exposing Schwerin visited the White House and other official locations at least 19 times between 2009 and 2015.
One of Schwerin’s visits – in November 2010 – was a sit-down with Biden in the West Wing as he was still president of the now-defunct Rosemont Seneca Partners.
Eight of Schwerin’s other visits between 2009 and 2013 were with Joe and Jill Biden aides, the Post reported.
Biden met with Hunter Biden business partner at White House in 2010: Report
A White House official deflected on a media inquiry from Fox News Digital about Schwerin’s visits to the White House during the Obama administration by criticizing “transparency” issues in the Trump administration.
“These are all meetings that have been public for years because both the Obama-Biden Administration and this administration released visitor records for the sake of transparency – a practice discontinued during the Trump years,” the official said.
Hunter Biden, left, the son of President Joe Biden, holds his son, Beau Biden, and waves to people in the audience during the White House Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn of the White House, Monday, April 18, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked about the visits on Monday but sidestepped the question.
“On Hunter Biden, the New York Post is reporting, looking at White House visitor logs, that there were 19 visits to the White House while the president was vice president by Hunter Biden’s business partner, including one with the vice president,” said a PBS reporter in the briefing.
“Can you help us understand why that business partner had access and what those meetings were about?”
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Psaki responded by saying she didn’t have any knowledge of the meetings.
“I don’t have any information on that,” she said. “I’m happy to check and see if we have any more comment.”
Schwerin did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.