It’s a tale of two scions.
A Mexican heir to a political dynasty is being prosecuted in his notoriously corrupt home country on tax charges, but his former pal and business associate, Hunter Biden, seems to be getting a pass in the U.S. on similar allegations — and worse.
Miguel Alemán Magnani, the grandson of a former president and son of a onetime governor, co-founded the now-defunct low-cost airline Interjet with his father. Now Alemán, who appears frequently in emails and messages on Hunter Biden’s laptop, is on the lam in France and accused of defrauding the Mexican government of $3.2 million in taxes. But just a few years ago, Alemán was a high-flying executive with powerful connections north of the border.
Alemán figures into some of the most problematic examples of the Bidens apparently mixing personal and official business, all laid bare on the laptop Biden abandoned at a Delaware repair shop. In one case, Hunter Biden wrote the Alemán in February 2016, ahead of a trip to Mexico with the then-vice president, to complain that White House access hadn’t translated into business opportunities.
“I’m attending meeting w/ President N w/ Dad,” Hunter Biden wrote in an email to Alemán that was reviewed by The Daily Wire. “We have so many great things to do together and I want you at the plane when the the VP lands with your Mom and Dad.
“We have been talking about business deals and partnerships for 7 years,” the younger Biden’s email continued. “And I really appreciate you letting me stay at your resort villa… but I have brought every single person you have ever asked me to bring to the F’ing WHite House and the Vice President’s house and the inauguration and then you go completely silent.”
Perhaps it is not surprising that Hunter Biden was miffed. By 2016, he and Alemán had a long history together. In addition to Alemán having a stake in Biden’s Rosemont investment firm, the pair had worked on several deals together and Alemán had been invited to the inauguration after Barack Obama and Joe Biden won a second term in 2012.
“Thank you again for your invitation to Washington. I am very honored,” Alemán wrote Hunter Biden in January 2013.
Early the following year, Hunter Biden brought Alemán, his father, and attorney and pal Jeff Cooper to lunch with Joe Biden in his vice presidential office, emails show. Hunter Biden later asked the White House to have his father sign the pictures so he could give them to Alemán, according to emails.
Alemán and Hunter worked together to attempt to broker a deal between Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company that paid Hunter up to $80,000 a month, and Pemex, a Mexican state-owned energy company.
Alemán “wants us to try to bring a Burisma exec with us on our trip (which he is still trying to figure out exact timing),” Cooper wrote Hunter Biden and another close pal, Devon Archer, in November 2014.
They pulled government strings to make it happen.
“Miguel has the energy secretary lined up for a meeting on Monday. Devon, can you and someone from Burisma be there?” Cooper wrote in two months later. “Hopefully it works out and hopefully we can make some hay next week.”
When Alemán invested $1 million in what Hunter called “a portfolio company of mine called ePlata,” a cut went directly to Hunter Biden.
“Good news, we did receive a $1,000,000 injection into ePlata from Miguel late today. I wanted to wire you the $50,000 first thing tomorrow AM,” a March 2015 email to Hunter Biden from a Cooper associate said. Alemán was later named to the ePlata board.
The deals with Hunter Biden apparently didn’t insulate Alemán from tax troubles in Mexico. In July 2021, at the request of Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office, a Mexican federal judge issued an arrest warrant on tax fraud charges. Migration authorities realized his jet had left the country six months earlier, and in August, Interpol issued a red alert to 190 countries to search for Alemán. His lawyer said that year that Alemán was fighting the arrest warrant from France, according to Bloomberg.
Alemán’s criminal charges stem from $3.2 million in taxes that Interjet allegedly collected from customers and employees but did not forward to the government. His lawyer told Bloomberg that the company, not Alemán, is responsible and that his client’s French citizenship — courtesy of his actress mother — means he cannot be extradited.
Alemán joins a crew of other Hunter Biden associates to face serious legal problems. But Biden himself so far has not faced criminal charges, despite his tax troubles being so severe that his passport could not be renewed, according to an email on the laptop. In 2020, he paid off a $450,000 tax lien, a retroactive payment which would not absolve him of any criminal liability, but could mitigate any punishment.
Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss is reportedly weighing charging Hunter Biden with tax, lobbying, or gun violations, and some witnesses have been called to testify before a grand jury, according to reports.
But other reports indicate that the investigation may be less than aggressive. FBI agents reportedly sat on the laptop for a year after receiving it. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said whistleblowers told him that Timothy Thibault, a top FBI agent who resigned amid an investigation into partisan social media posts, “attempted to improperly mark the matter in FBI systems so that it could not be opened in the future.”
The New York Post said the FBI failed to follow up with Tony Bobulinski, a former Biden business partner who said that Joe Biden was the “Big Guy” who was to get 10% of a foreign windfall. That’s despite Bobulinski being a well-placed source and seemingly highly credible witness, as a former Navy officer with top secret clearances who has donated to politicians of both parties.