Hunter Biden-linked companies took millions in bailout loans, - taxpayer funds Posted: Oct 23rd, 2020 - 3:11 am
Tech company, TALF loans leave trail of taxpayer funding.
Hunter Biden's business conglomerate didn't just benefit from foreign investments and fees. It also scored tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer-backed subsidies and loans, federal records and financial documents show.
The finances of the Biden family have come under increased scrutiny in the waning days of the 2020 presidential election season, particularly after bombshell reports in the New York Post this month appeared to suggest that Hunter Biden may have been selling access to the former vice president.
In one email published by the Post, an equity-allocation arrangement involving a Chinese investment appeared to involve Hunter Biden receiving a sum of money to be held for "the big guy," reportedly Joe Biden.
Joe Biden has dismissed the controversy as a "smear campaign," though his campaign has not denied the authenticity of the emails.
Tens of millions in securities loans went to Biden-linked firm
Renewed interest in the Bidens' financial arrangements has shined new light on Hunter Biden's past involvement with millions of dollars in federal funds.
Rosemont Seneca Partners, an investment firm founded by Hunter along with business partners Devon Archer and Christopher Heinz, the stepson of former Secretary of State Jon Kerry, oversaw tens of millions of federal security loans in 2009 when Archer and Heinz founded Rosemont TALF, a spinoff firm designed to handle funds from the Federal Reserve's Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility program.
That program, announced in late 2008 in the depths of the financial crisis, was meant to jumpstart consumer spending amid the cratering economy. Like other firms participating in the initiative, Rosemont TALF was issued securities in order to help facilitate increased consumer credit and by extension consumer spending during the worst of the recession.
Data from the Federal Reserve indicate that Rosemont TALF ultimately obtained around $130 million in loans from that institution. Officials with the Federal Reserve told Just the News that the program itself was dissolved in 2014 and that all loans associated with it had been repaid in full by that time.
Rolling Stone in 2011 dubbed the program "welfare for the rich," citing "the wives of two Morgan Stanley bigwigs" as among the principal investor-recipients of a $220 million loan.
Hawaii tech startup firm gets millions in public funds, shuts down
Attorneys for Archer and Biden did not respond to requests for comment on those undertakings as well as another business venture in the U.S. state of Hawaii.
Several years after Rosemont TALF was founded, a technology initiative on Maui linked to the larger Rosemont firm received millions in public funding before folding shortly thereafter.
State documentation shows that mbloom, a tech fund for startups on the island of Maui, received $5 million in combined state and federal funding — $2 million from Hawaii's HI Growth initiative and $3 million from the federal State Small Business Credit Initiative — in order to establish a "seed-stage investment fund ... focused on companies in the IT/software space."
The fund was ultimately given a matching $5 million investment by Devon Archer, the state announced in early 2014; that funding came via Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners.
Controversy arose almost immediately with mbloom's first two tech investments going to startups run by the fund's two managers. Following Devon Archer's arrest in 2016 on securities fraud charges, the fund's managers departed, and it was restructured as Reef Capital Ventures.
Hunter Biden was listed as the managing director of Rosemont Seneca Technology Partner's Washington office in early 2014, just as mbloom was getting started, while Archer was managing the company's New York location.
The Biden presidential campaign did not respond to requests for comment regarding what role, if any, Joe Biden may have played in securing funding for either Rosemont TALF or mbloom.
LINK/URL: Hunter Biden-linked companies took millions in bailout loans,
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