Hunter Biden, Rent and Classified Documents—What We Do Know, What We Don't

News that President Joe Biden kept classified documents at his home and an office of a college think tank has made the start of the commander-in-chief's 2023 difficult, to say the least.

With a Department of Justice investigation underway, a new wave of controversy was unleashed after a photo emerged suggesting Hunter Biden may have lived at his father's home when the documents were stored there.

The photo of a form, showing a tenancy background check filled with Hunter Biden's details and what appeared to be the president's address, underlined the potential vulnerabilities of these confidential papers.

Furthermore, details within the form were claimed to be proof that Hunter Biden paid his father around $50,000 in rent every month, inspiring new accusations that the president may have benefited from his son's business dealings, details of which have been under scrutiny for several years.

Among critics of the president who responded to the news, House Oversight Committee Chair and Kentucky Republican Representative James Comer told Newsweek previously: "We need to know if Hunter Biden's shady business partners located in China and Russia had access to these classified documents."

Based on what available evidence there is so far, Newsweek's Fact Check team explored and assessed some of these fresh claims surrounding the classified documents, Hunter Biden, and the president.

What does the Hunter Biden form show?

On January 12, 2022, Miranda Devine, a New York Post journalist and author of "Laptop From Hell: Hunter Biden, Big Tech, and the Dirty Secrets the President Tried to Hide" tweeted: "In 2018 Hunter Biden claimed he owned the house where Joe Biden kept classified documents alongside his Corvette in the garage."

Devine's tweet included a photo of a "Background Screening Request" for Applycheck, a tenant screening agency that lists Hunter Biden's "Current Address" as Barley Mill Road, Wilmington, Delaware.

While the photo remains unverified at the time of publication, "Barley Mill Road" is known to be Joe Biden's address in Wilmington, Delaware where classified documents have been found.

Devine attributed the photo to user @jj_talking, who had shortly before tweeted the same photo, adding: "According to the box that Hunter Biden checked in 2018, he owns that Corvette garage He also kept Joe locked in the basement there."

One response to Devine's tweet by Marco Polo, an obscure organization that describes itself as a "nonprofit research group exposing corruption & blackmail", included a link to a report posted on its website about the 2020 Hunter Biden laptop leaks, which contained a copy of the photo among a wide range of files said to be from the device.

Newsweek was unable to verify either the authenticity of the photo or whether it came from the laptop and was not able to find a copy of the photo published before January 12, 2022, beyond the report cited by Marco Polo. Newsweek has contacted Miranda Devine and Marco Polo for comment.

Although news reports about the classified documents only mention that they were found in the garage of the president's Wilmington home, with no full address, a 2008 Democratic National Committee Certification of Nomination lists Joe Biden's address as "1209 Barley Mill Road, Wilmington, Delaware 19807" (the same ZIP Code on the background check under "Current Address"). The address is also listed under residential property records naming Joe and Jill Biden.

The form also states the name of a company, Owasco PC (named in a Senate investigation of Hunter Biden's finances as his law firm) under the heading "Current Residence".

Under that same heading, the form states the applicant owns the property, that their monthly rent was $49,910, that they moved in in March 2017, and moved out in February 2018.

This appears to have led some to conclude (among other claims) that Hunter Biden was paying nearly $50,000 in rent to live at his father's house.

Did Hunter Biden pay Joe Biden $50,000 in rent?

The detail in the form led to an outpour of comment among Republicans and conservative media outlets.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who credited @jj_talking for posting Hunter Biden's background check, said: "This is the very same home where Joe Biden has spent a third of his presidency...Did Hunter Biden actually buy his father's home in Delaware?

"Was he making rent payments to live there? Does that amount that he was paying refer to another property?

"It was a big amount. On the form, Hunter Biden's claiming he's paying nearly $50,000 a month in housing costs. Where did that money come from?"

Former president Donald Trump said on Truth Social the matter marked the "beginning of one of the greatest political and money laundering Scams of all time."

Speaking to Newsweek earlier, Comer said: "In light of the Biden family's suspicious business schemes with foreign adversaries, Americans need to know who visited the President's Wilmington residence and had access to the classified documents Joe Biden stashed in his garage for years.

"According to reports, Hunter Biden has indicated the Delaware residence was a personal asset and his residence as recently as 2018. We need to know if Hunter Biden's shady business partners located in China and Russia had access to these classified documents."

The form—at least, the one page shared on its own—and the way it is filled in is a little confusing. For example, under "Current Residence" there are no other address details or spaces where such information could be included. This is what may have led many to conclude that the rent of $49,910 relates to the Wilmington property.

However, based on other reporting and documents taken from the Hunter Biden laptop cache, it appears the $50,000 or so listed in the form may in fact have been rent for another property; an office at the Washington D.C-based "House of Sweden", owned by the Swedish National Property Board.

A 2021 report by Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, which examined a trove of communications between the National Property Board and Hunter Biden's representatives, stated that in February 2017: "Hunter Biden and his companies" moved into House of Sweden, with rent at "$50,000 per quarter".

Furthermore, an email exchange among files from the Hunter Biden laptop leak, which shows a conversation with "CECILIA BROWNING, GENERAL MANAGER AT HOUSE OF SWEDEN" also lists a security deposit that exactly matches the rent listed on the background check form. Emails within that exchange also roughly match the dates quoted in the background check and the Dagens Nyheter investigation.

The National Property Board of Sweden confirmed to Newsweek that "$49,910 was paid quarterly between March 2017 and February 2018."

A Washington Post report from March 2022, which used verified emails and documents from the Hunter Biden laptop leak, also stated that House of Sweden was used while Hunter Biden was in business with executives at now-defunct Chinese energy company CEFC in 2017.

While Newsweek has not independently verified the laptop emails, this suggests that the rental property Hunter Biden referred to in the form is House of Sweden, not the Delaware home of his father. House of Sweden confirmed to Fox News in 2020 that Hunter Biden's company, Rosemont Seneca, had rented property there.

"House of Sweden is owned and managed by National Property Board Sweden," general manager Cecilia Browning said to Fox News. "We have tenants who rent office space, and it is correct that Rosemont Seneca LLC rented an office at House of Sweden between February 2017 – February 2018."

While there are other claims that Hunter Biden had keys made to the building for his father, they were never picked up, according to a comment by Michael Blomqvist, director of premises at the National Property Board, reported Dagens Nyheter.

There is no other information that suggests the president had independent access to the office.

So, it appears that the background check form shared on social media is not sufficient evidence to confirm that Hunter Biden was paying his father $50,000 in rent per month.

One possible explanation is that the form was incorrectly filled in; that Hunter Biden ticked that he owned the property.

This does not mean that Hunter Biden wasn't making payments to his father in some other way. A 2021 report by the Daily Mail, based on communications from the Hunter Biden laptop leak, alleged he complained about having to give half his salary to "Pop".

At this stage, we cannot rule out the possibility that the payment was rent for the family home and that the exact same sum paid to House of Sweden was merely a coincidence.

Whatever the explanation, the photo of the background check still does not sufficiently prove that he was paying his father nearly $50,000 on a regular basis.

What does this form tell us about Hunter Biden's business dealings?

The dates when Hunter Biden was renting at House of Sweden coincide with business dealings he had while associated with Chinese energy companies CEFC and Sinopec, and Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, a career history for which the president has faced questions.

The disclosure has led some theorists to suggest that the form is evidence linking the president to his son's business dealings abroad. Twitter user Catturd, who regularly posts about Hunter Biden, stated: "Hunter's 50k month rent for Joe Biden's home is 90% to the Big Guy - and we all know it. This is how they do it."

The "Big Guy" reference alludes to an email from 2017 from James Gilliar, a business associate of Hunter Biden (as reported by multiple outlets including Newsweek, The Daily Mail, and the New York Post), summarizing equity allocations in Oneida Holdings LLC.

Oneida was described by The Washington Post as an "entity" used to divide ownership stakes in a venture with CEFC, the now-bankrupt Chinese energy company that Hunter Biden did business with.

The email, which The Washington Post said was verified by Politico reporter Ben Schreckinger in his 2021 book "The Bidens", mentions a 10 percent allocation to "the big guy". Tony Bobulinski, the Post reported, a former associate of Hunter Biden, claimed this was a reference to Joe Biden.

The email did not state who the "Big Guy" was, while Joe Biden claimed in September 2019: "I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings."

Gilliar also told the Wall Street Journal in 2020: "I would like to clear up any speculation that former Vice President Biden was involved with the 2017 discussions about our potential business structure. I am unaware of any involvement at anytime of the former vice president. The activity in question never delivered any project revenue."

This complicated thread of claims between the $49,910 and Hunter Biden's business dealings led some to suggest the background check was proof of an even more direct relationship to CEFC and China.

Charlie Kirk, founder of conservative youth activist group Turning Point USA, tweeted: "So Hunter Biden just happens to WAY overpay $49,910 a month to rent the Big Guy's Delaware home that just happens to exactly match a $49,910 deposit related to the Biden Family business dealings with CEFC China Energy. I'm sure it's just one giant coincidence."

RNC Research, a Republican Party Twitter account, made an even more explicit connection between Hunter Biden's Chinese business relationships and the country's government.

In 2017, CEFC was ostensibly a private company, according to the Financial Times, although it was taken over in 2018 by the state-controlled Citic Group, reported the South China Morning Post.

Citic's takeover was precipitated by the arrest of CEFC associate Patrick Ho by U.S. authorities in 2018, and the detainment of chair Ye Jianming by Chinese authorities in 2018.

In a 2019 interview, Hunter Biden told The New Yorker that his business venture with CEFC fell apart thereafter.

Hunter Biden was, however, up until 2019, associated with Chinese state-backed equity firm BHR, which invested heavily in state-owned Sinopec, Asia's largest oil refiner.

A report by the Financial Times stated that Rosemont Seneca had "unloaded its BHR stakes in 2017."

Nonetheless, the resurfaced claims about the "Big Guy" remain unverified and unevidenced, while (as previously explained) the payments in Hunter Biden's background check form appear to be directly related to rent alone and not business in China.

For the same reason, the form appears to have little or nothing to do with Hunter Biden's appointment to the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma; in particular, the amount of cash quoted in the background form and the $50,000 that some say Hunter was paid by Burisma every month after joining its board.

For a start, the $50,000 Burisma payment claim has previously been brought into question. A 2022 fact check by PolitiFact (which investigated various sums that Hunter Biden was said to have received from Burisma) mentioned a Senate Republican report from September 2020, which alleged he'd received $50,000 per month (although, as PolitiFact noted, this was based on news reports alone).

This, coupled with the strong probability that the $49,910 was related to rental payments at House of Sweden, means the form alone shared on Twitter is not sufficient evidence of a connection between the president, his son, and the Ukrainian energy company.

Another claim is that if Hunter Biden was paying $50,000 in rent to his father, Joe Biden did not declare it on tax forms at the time.

Rep. Lance Gooden (R-TX) tweeted on January 17, 2022, "Why didn't Joe Biden claim Hunter's $49,910 rental payments on his taxes?"; Brietbart reporter Wendell Husebø wrote: "Hunter Biden claimed in 2018 he paid over $49K per month in rent while living at his dad's Delaware house. Joe Biden's 2017 tax return on Schedule E only listed $19,800 in "rents received." In 2018, Biden listed no rents received."

As copies of these documents show, the president's tax returns from 2017 and 2018 list nowhere near $50,000 under income received from rental properties.

In short, the form does not state with certainty that Hunter Biden was paying his father $50,000 a month in rent, the likelihood being it related to rent at House of Sweden. The form alone, therefore, does not prove that the president misreported on his annual IRS statement.

What does this have to do with the classified documents scandal?

Despite concerns that Joe Biden may have created the opportunity for state secrets to end up in the wrong hands via his son, it was deducible that Hunter Biden potentially had access to them before the background check form emerged online.

We can't say for certain what level of access Hunter Biden had to the property and the various areas within it, although listing it on the background form and his driver's license implies some freedom to come and go.

In his autobiography Beautiful Things, Hunter Biden wrote about spending time quarantined at his father's house during the 2020 election.

"Yet one of the benefits of waiting so long for the race to be called was that we all waited it out together, at Mom and Dad's house—Melissa and the baby, my girls, Natalie and Hunter, Ashley and Howard," he wrote.

"More than waiting together, we were also quarantined together."

Although this excerpt does not explicitly mention where the house was, the property in Wilmington is described as his dad's house elsewhere in the text.

The book also mentions a family intervention in Wilmington in 2019 and visiting his late brother Beau's widow, Hallie, and her children at her home in Delaware from 2015 to 2017. Although he refers to the latter as "Hallie's house", in an earlier chapter Hunter mentions that "Beau's house in Wilmington" was "less than a mile from Dad's".

This suggests he visited or was near his father's house on a number of occasions between 2015-2020.

The potential that Hunter Biden had the opportunity to access the documents underlines the concerns around their security.

However, the form and the license alone don't tell us the specifics of when and how freely he could enter his father's property, or if he had access to the classified documents recently found there. These remain unanswered questions.

The nature of the classified documents is also unconfirmed, so we don't presently know for certain whether they had relevancy to any of Hunter Biden's business dealings. One unverified claim from an anonymous source in a CNN report said the documents contained intelligence material relating to Ukraine, Iran and the U.K.

Nor do we yet know when, for how long, exactly where, and with what security the documents were stored beyond the statements made by the White House and the president.

At a press briefing on Wednesday, January 18, 2022, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre deferred reporters' questions about the classified documents to the Justice Department.

"The president takes classified information seriously. You heard that directly from him. Takes classified documents seriously. You heard that directly from him last week," Jean-Pierre said.

"And I'm just going to leave it there. I'm not going to open this up for discussion."

What does this mean for investigations into the Biden family?

No matter what the photos of the background form can tell us, it is likely to be mentioned in the future, with House Republicans on at least two committees looking at the Biden family and their alleged compromising business ties as part of long-pursued investigations ramping up in the new Congress.

Comer, who is likely to look into both the president and Hunter Biden, has raised the issue of the latter's "questionable foreign business dealings in Russia and Ukraine" for well over a year.

The House Oversight Committee has stated that investigations into the Biden family's domestic and international business dealings are meant to find out whether U.S. national security has been compromised, and if the president has the "ability to lead with impartiality."

"Members of the Biden family have a pattern of peddling access to the highest levels of government to enrich themselves, often to the detriment of U.S. interests," the committee states on its website.

"We are committed to following the Biden family and associates' money trail—consisting of many complex, international transactions worth millions of dollars—and providing answers to the American people."

However these investigations turn out, the photos that were shared online this week, and were widely lauded as proof of corruption within the Biden family, do not on present evidence appear to be the smoking gun that some have claimed them to be.

Newsweek has contacted The White House, Hunter Biden's representatives, and the Department of Justice for comment.

Updated, 1/20/23, 13:00 ET: This article was updated with comments from The National Property Board of Sweden.