A whistleblower claimed the IRS was stopped from questioning Joe Biden’s sister, Valerie Biden-Owens, who was described as a “last ditch effort” in the president’s decision-making, about cash received from Hunter Biden.
Biden Owens received payments from his eldest son through Venmo, according to an interview with IRS whistleblower Joseph Ziegler, a 13-year veteran of the IRS who testified before the House Ways and Means Committee last month.
“So I always ask, ‘Can I go interview them?’ “I think one of them was Valerie Owens.
Ziegler, a Democrat and lead investigator in the IRS investigation into Hunter Biden, testified before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee on Wednesday about how efforts to interview Biden’s family were denied and an investigation into his eldest son’s lucrative foreign consulting business was blocked by prosecutors at the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office.
It’s not clear how much Biden Owens received from her nephew through Venmo, but the exchange sheds new light on the Biden family and her powerful position at the center of political activism.
The sheer force and single-minded purpose that characterized Biden Owen’s activism in his brother’s political campaign earned her the nickname “Hurricane,” which she adopted as one of her email addresses.
A former aide who campaigned for Mr. Biden in the failed 1988 presidential election said the “brilliant character” of Biden Owens, described as short-tempered with Mr. Biden’s officials, often “compensated.”
“She’s outgoing, funny, and quickly eases any tension,” said the former aide. “When Joe was in the Senate, there were seven or eight people who listened to him, and she was definitely one of them.”
Biden Owens is still making decisions behind the White House, according to former aides who spoke to the Post this week.
“She was never part of Joe’s strategy team,” said the former White House aide. “But she’s his last try. They’re best friends and the president respects her opinion, but she’s not sitting with the president in the Oval Office. She’s at the White House for dinner, talking to the president and the first lady over dinner.”
A new email released last month by the conservative nonprofit sheds light on Biden Owens’ brother’s role as a vital confidante. Biden Owens, 77, has led the president’s political campaign since his first foray into politics in 1969 when he ran for Newcastle County Council in Delaware.
The emails, dated from December 2009 to March 2019, are excerpted from Hunter Biden’s discarded laptop and show Biden-Owens as the final arbiter and microcontroller for all matters involving her brother and the Biden family.
Biden Owens highlighted language in the Beau Biden Foundation’s 10-kilometer fundraiser flyer and made strong suggestions about who to invite to St. Patrick’s Day breakfast in 2016 (“Unless there is a specific reason JRB wants the Bells, I’m going to remove it,” she wrote). She also had strong opinions about which photos of Biden should be used in promotional videos.
“Before sending the final cut, I would like to change the photo of Joe,” Biden Owens wrote in an email to Biden senior adviser Mike Donillon on July 17, 2016. “His eyes are tightly closed, but you know I always want him to look good.”
But what the flood of emails really sheds new light on is her central role in coordinating the family, especially in raising funds for the Biden family’s many projects.
In a series of emails between Hunter Biden and Biden Owens, she brainstormed ideas for a logo for the Beau Biden Foundation, which she helped set up just weeks after the president’s eldest son died in 2015. Biden Owens wrote on June 12, 2015, in a series of emails that included Hunter, Bo’s widow Harry Biden, and former Chief Financial Officer Josh Alcorn, “Idea: A flying eagle was built using children’s blocks for its claws.” A foundation dedicated to the protection of children.
There is also a very personal email addressed to Hunter Biden after his brother passed away in May 2015.
In November 2016, Biden Owens contacted Hunter, who was in and out of a drug and alcohol rehab facility.
Mr. Biden Owen wrote to Mr. Hunter on November 14, 2016, saying that he was “unreachable and unable to speak.” Please call as soon as possible so that I can hear your voice. “
In a subsequent email the same day, she wrote: “I’ve been trying you.” Her petition is followed by a phone number that includes the Washington, D.C. area code.
In October 2016, police in Prescott, Arizona, found a glass pipe and a Ziploc bag containing a “white powdery substance” in the passenger seat of Hunter’s rented Jeep. No charges were filed against Hunter because authorities claimed they could not prove that he had actually used a pipe containing cocaine residues. According to his book Beautiful Things, he began dating his brother’s widow Harry shortly thereafter.
Aunt Val, whom his nephew knows, became a surrogate mother to Hunter and Bo after Biden’s first wife, Neilia Hunter Biden, and one-year-old daughter, Naomi, died in a car accident in December 1972, shortly after Biden won his first U.S. Senate election. Biden Owens moved into her brother’s house to take care of her toddler.
A grieving Biden famously took office in the boys’ hospital room on January 3, 1973, but the memorable photoshoot orchestrated by Biden and his sister was largely due to politicians’ refusal to leave their sons during their convalescence, according to Biden Owens’ 2022 memoir Growing Up Biden.
Even after Biden married his second wife, Jill, in 1977, Biden-Owens continued to be intimate with the boys. On March 13, 2013, Biden Owens emailed Hunter from her personal account, attempting to set up a meeting with Ron Crane, who served as Biden’s chief of staff from 2009 to 2011, when Biden was Vice President.
“Sorry, I’m a very picky nephew,” Hunter wrote in response to her aunt’s request for a date. His email signature is Rosemount Seneca, a Washington DC investment advisory firm he co-founded.
“You’re a great nephew,” Biden Owens replied. “I’ve never bothered you. I have to see Ron Crane, so I’ll see you when you get back. Zo.”
Two days before Hunter’s 45th birthday and months before Beau died in 2015, Biden Owens explained his close relationship with his nephews in an email sent from his personal account.
“You gave me a new life. Neilia, your mama gave me. I tried very hard to repay that gift,” she wrote in an email dated February 2, 2015, with the subject line “My Boys.”
In addition to his role as patriarch, Biden Owens’ main job for more than half a century has been to keep his brother looking good. Not only was she a key figure in Biden’s senatorial campaign and three presidential campaigns, she is also director of the Joseph R. Biden Jr. Institute of Public Policy and Public Administration at the University of Delaware.
“In 1972 women were not in control of the Senate campaign,” she wrote in her memoir. So sometimes I had to correct the players. It’s no coincidence that I was called ‘Hurricane’. “
The email exchange was attended by aides and members of the Biden family, discussing coverage of Biden and ways to increase his appeal. In May 2012, Biden confidant Ted Kaufman praised the team for inviting the University of Delaware women’s basketball team to the White House in an email sent to Biden Owens, Hunter, Beau and Smith.
“This was a stroke of genius,” writes Kaufman. “He could have built more positives at DE than he has ever done as vice president.
Biden Owens, a former social studies teacher at a private Quaker school in Wilmington, wrote in his book that during his brother’s early political campaigns, he volunteered high school students to build signs and traveled across Delaware to support the election of Mr. Biden, a political unknown in the state.
“I would get fired for something like this today, but I told them I would disqualify them if they didn’t work for my brother,” she wrote.
Biden Owens is so trusted by her brother that she was tapped to speak on his behalf during his disastrous defeat in the 2020 New Hampshire primary while Biden left for an election event in South Carolina.
“The results don’t seem to be what we expected, but we’re going to campaign every inch of this country,” said Biden Owens.
“There is no doubt that they are close relatives, and politics is a family affair,” said the former White House aide.
Biden Owens did not respond to a request for comment.
