(LifeSiteNews) – Emails from Hunter Biden’s now-verified laptop show that he worked to secure millions of dollars for a Department of Defense (DoD) contractor connected to research on dangerous pathogens in Ukraine.
The emails, initially reported last week by The Daily Mail, lend credence to recent claims by Russian officials that the first son helped finance Ukrainian biolabs.
The Daily Mail obtained the emails from Jack Maxey, former co-host of Steve Bannon’s “War Room” and a member of LifeSite’s “Faith and Reason” show.
The emails reveal that Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners (RSTP), an investment firm co-founded by Hunter Biden, raised millions of dollars for Metabiota, a U.S. biotech company that specializes in research on infectious diseases that could be used for biowarfare.
Hunter was directly involved in RSTP’s dealings with Metabiota, which started weeks after the overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, and discussed the company’s “engagement in Ukraine” with top Metabiota executives. RSTP also appears to have introduced Metabiota to a corrupt Ukrainian energy firm that Biden worked with, according to the emails.
Hunter Biden, Metabiota, and Burisma
RSTP was an offshoot of investment fund Rosemont Capital, which Hunter Biden founded in 2009 with Christopher Heinz, the stepson of former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. The company is now known as Pilot Growth Equity.
RSTP invested at least $500,000 in Metabiota in 2014, according to emails published by The Daily Mail, and raised millions in additional funding for the biotech company from other investment groups, including Goldman Sachs.
Dealings between RSTP and Metabiota began just weeks after the ousting of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who was pushed out of office in February 2014 after months of unrest actively supported by the U.S. government. Russia annexed the Crimea region in southern Ukraine that March.
Days later, Metabiota vice president Mary Guttieri emailed Hunter Biden with a memo describing how her company could “assert Ukraine’s cultural and economic independence from Russia.”
“Thanks so much for taking time out of your intense schedule to meet with Kathy [Dimeo, a Metabiota executive] and I on Tuesday,” she told Hunter. “We very much enjoyed our discussion.”
“As promised, I’ve prepared the attached memo, which provides an overview of Metabiota, our engagement in Ukraine, and how we can potentially leverage our team, networks, and concepts to assert Ukraine’s cultural and economic independence from Russia and continued integration into Western society,” Guttieri said.
Then-Vice President Joe Biden had been tapped to oversee the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy earlier that year.
Other emails show that RSTP connected Metabiota to Burisma, a corrupt Ukrainian energy company that hired Hunter Biden as a board member in May 2014.
In an April 8, 2014 email forwarded to Hunter, Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi wrote to the younger Biden’s disgraced business partner Devon Archer about a “science project” in Ukraine.
“Please find few initial points to be discussed for the purposes of analyzing the potential of this as you called, ‘Science Ukraine project,’” Pozharskyi said. “What kind of partnership Metabiota is looking for in Ukraine?”
Pozharskyi also pointed out that Metabiota worked closely with Black & Veatch (B&V), a defense contractor that built biolabs in Ukraine for the U.S. government. “As I understand the Metabiota was a subcontract to principal contactor [sic] of the DoD B&V,” Pozharskyi said.
The U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) commissioned B&V in 2010 to build a Bio-Safety Level 3 facility in Odessa to “enhance the government’s existing surveillance systems to detect, report and respond to bioterrorism attacks, epidemics and potential pandemics,” according to the company’s website, The Daily Mail noted.
In 2012, B&V received a five-year DTRA contract worth $85 million.
The Department of Defense granted Metabiota more than $18 million between February 2014 and November 2016, according to federal spending records. The funding included $307,091 for “Ukrainian research projects.”
In pitches to investors, Hunter Biden bragged that RSTP helped Metabiota “get new customers,” such as “government agencies.” He and a close associate, Eric Schwerin, also discussed subletting office space to the company. Neil Callahan, a board member of Metabiota, at one point worked as an RSTP executive and is a managing partner of Pilot Growth Equity.
In another email to Biden in late 2014, Schwerin described a deal between RSTP and Metabiota worth $11 million.
Ukraine’s ‘biological laboratories’
The emails back up claims by the Russian government that Hunter Biden funded “biological laboratories” in Ukraine.
“US President Joe Biden himself is involved in the creation of biolaboratories in Ukraine,” said Russia’s State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, state-owned news agency Tass reported last week. “An investment fund run by his sun [sic] Hunter Biden funded research and the implementation of the United States’ military biological program.”
“It is obvious that Joe Biden, as his father and the head of state, was aware of that activity,” Volodin continued. He said that Joe Biden has an obligation “to explain to the world community the evidence concerning the activity of biological laboratories discovered in the course of the military operation in Ukraine.”
The Biden administration has denied Moscow’s allegations of U.S.-backed bioweapons projects in Ukraine, but has acknowledged that biolabs financed by the U.S. across the country likely contain dangerous pathogens. The World Health Organization this month urged Ukraine to destroy any such disease-causing pathogens to prevent “potential spills.”
The Daily Mail additionally reported that Metabiota has links to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), a level-4 Chinese biosafety lab from which SARS-CoV2 is now widely thought to have emerged.
The WIV notoriously conducted “gain of function” research that involved manipulating bat coronaviruses and handling pathogens nearly identical to the novel coronavirus. The research was carried out in collaboration with U.S.-based non-profit EcoHealth Alliance.
Researchers with Metabiota, the WIV, and EcoHealth Alliance jointly authored a 2014 study about infectious diseases in Chinese bats.
Jack Maxey on Saturday published 253 emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop about RSTP’s involvement with Metabiota, though the link to the emails has been deactivated. Maxey has said that he plans to release the entire contents of the laptops to the public in the near future.
The infamous laptop was initially discovered in 2019 after being abandoned at a computer repair shop miles from the Bidens’ Delaware home. The contents of the laptop were verified by cybersecurity experts last April and are currently being used in a federal investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes.
The laptop features significant evidence of Joe Biden’s involvement in his son’s business dealings with Chinese state-backed entities and numerous foreign businessmen. Messages indicate that Hunter Biden even sought business ties with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping and describe child sex abuse allegations against Hunter, including in conversations with his father.
Dr. Maike Hickson contributed to this report.