(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) A recent analysis has revealed that California Gov. Gavin Newsom was one of the beneficiaries of Hunter Biden’s shady business deals that took place while his father, Joe Biden, was vice president, Fox News reported.
According to the outlet, the two exchanged a number of emails, culminating in a $10,000 donation to Newsom’s 2018 gubernatorial campaign.
The two appear to have struck up their cameraderie in 2014, shortly after Newsom was elected to his second term as California’s lieutenant governor, after Jessica Lee—an associate, at the time, of Newsom’s wife—wrote Hunter to discuss a documentary film project.
“I’d love to tell you about it and get your advice about gaining visibility for the film in DC, and how the work we’re doing on gender stereotypes, especially healthy masculinity, and [sic] might align with the work the Vice President is doing,” Lee wrote.
Ten days later, Lee thanked Hunter for meeting with her.
But given the digital record, it appears that Newsom himself likely met with Hunter.
Two days after the exchange between Hunter and Lee concluded, Newsom sent Hunter an email with the subject line “here’s my direct email” and again offered words of encouragement several months later, after Hunter’s cocaine habit led to his dishonorable discharge from the U.S. Navy.
“Like so many other things in life , this will pass and you will come out in the white water stronger — Gavin,” said the October 2014 message.
Several years later, as his gubernatorial campaign began to heat up, Newsom sent a “check in” email asking for campaign cash.
“I wanted to check in now that we are 6 months out from the primary,” Newsom wrote in 2018.
“While we have been performing well so far, as the race heats up and we enter the election year, we are pushing incredibly hard to raise the funds we need to invest early in our digital program and voter contact,” he wrote.
He proceeded to check to see if Hunter “might be willing to help out before our end of year deadline this weekend.”
Many of the political transactions between the two seem to have been arranged through lobbyist Eve O’Toole, whom Newsom referred to as his “best friend and trusted adviser” at a 2013 event.
In various emails, Newsom refers to Hunter having been “roped” into co-hosting a D.C. event by O’Toole, while Hunter writes to O’Toole, “I owe you big time,” implying there may have been a quid pro quo arrangement that the emails do not address.
During a recent interview, Newsom—who has been surprisingly reluctant to criticize Biden’s presidency given his shining opportunity to step in as a primary challenger—again came to the defense of the Biden family when asked if Hunter Biden had acted in an “inappropriate” manner in his foreign business deals.
“I don’t know enough about the details of that,” Newsom told CNN’s Dana Bash. “I mean I’ve seen a little of that.”
He also suggested that nepotism and influence-peddling, such as Hunter’s leveraging of the family name to make millions from foreign nations like China and Ukraine, was to be expected.
“If that’s the new criteria, there are a lot of folks in a lot of industries—not just in politics—where people have family members and relationships and they’re trying to parlay and get a little influence and benefit in that respect,” he noted. “That’s hardly unique.”
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
