An aide to Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) aiming to have then-Vice President Joe Biden host an event in 2010 first reached out to a business partner of Hunter Biden with the request, emails on the first son’s abandoned laptop show.
Danny O’Brien, who served as Menendez’s chief of staff from 2008 to 2015, called Eric Schwerin, Hunter’s associate at Rosemont Seneca Partners, around April 2010 to discuss the annual meeting of the US-Spain Council — which works to build ties between Washington and Madrid.
“Danny wants to explore with you possibility of getting VP to host event at NAVOBs for group,” Schwerin said in an April 7, 2010, email to Hunter Biden, referring to the vice president’s residence at the Naval Observatory.
At the time, Menendez was serving as the honorary chair of the council, which was planning to host “CEOs of the major banks” in Spain as well as the country’s foreign minister, according to Schwerin.
“I think Solomont mentioned your interest in Spain and that is why Danny is calling us,” he also told Hunter, mentioning then-US Ambassador to Spain Alan Solomont.
O’Brien then confirmed in an April 28 email that a formal letter extending the invitation had been sent to the vice president’s office. That request was declined, prompting O’Brien to petition Hunter again for his dad’s attendance.
“Please see the revised request I just sent in to the Vice President’s office. Any chance you could forward it to Hunter?” O’Brien wrote in a May 6, 2010, email to Schwerin. “Ambassador Solomont was in yesterday and will be broaching the matter with the Vice President when they meet in Madrid later this week.”
Schwerin forwarded the exchange to Hunter, relaying that he already knew the vice president “indicated wanting to stay down and play golf” that weekend rather than attend the event before “he leaves for the National Parks.”
O’Brien, who previously worked for Joe Biden in the Senate and as an adviser on his 2008 campaign, anticipated the excuse, telling Schwerin: “he’s probably going to want to stay down and play golf, right?”
Eventually, O’Brien petitioned the second son directly about the invitation — and the two attended a Washington Nationals baseball game in June 2010, the month before the event was set to be held, other emails show.
The conversation appears to have kicked off an effort to promote the American subsidiary of the Spanish railway manufacturer CAF.
“Eric (my partner) was going to send you an email tonight. I told him I thought we (my group) should make the case that CAF USA needs to step up it’s appeal to key members who could in turn appeal to WH/ DOT,” Hunter wrote in a Sept. 14, 2010, email to Hilary Rosen, a partner at the PR firm SKDKnickerbocker.
“They need Menendez (very involved in US- Spain business counsel) to take the lead (not Lautenberg- they hate each other) they need him to go to [Sen. Chuck] Schumer [D-NY] and raise an alarm that NY is in jeopardy of loosing [sic] hundreds of jobs and go to Steny and point out that MD faces the same fate in the loss of supplier jobs,” he added, referring to former New Jersey Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg and Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.).
“You clearly have pulled them from the abyss, but the notion they haven’t hired a world class lobbyist as they have a world class PR firm is ridiculous,” Hunter also told Rosen.
“I want to send that message but only if it doesn’t interfere with the direction you are headed. I obviously can’t lobby, but if I could I would be in Schumer’s office begging and arguing for jobs in NY.”
CAF’s manufacturing plant is located in Elmira Heights, NY. In July 2010, the firm won a bid for a nearly $300 million contract with Amtrak, according to a trade publication.