By Seamus Bruner
On April 12, 2014, just as Hunter Biden was starting his lucrative position with the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, he received an email from his longtime friend Alexander S. Mackler. Three days after this email, the first monthly payment of $83,333 from Burisma arrived.
That email, and the story behind the man who sent it, offers a telling glimpse into the powerful network of influence that Hunter Biden exploited in his dealings abroad, and may bear upon the criminal case against Biden that was kept alive last week by a Delaware judge.
Mackler is a Biden family friend and confidante who showed up at key points in the Biden corruption saga as he weaved in and out of positions working for the Biden family.
In the Spring of 2014, Mackler was an informal advisor to Hunter, who was trying to score big with Burisma, the controversial Ukrainian energy company, at a moment when Ukraine was in a state of turmoil. Hunter had no expertise in energy, nor any special knowledge of the region – but he had friends who did.
One of them was Ted Kaufman, Joe Biden’s longtime chief of staff and his successor in the Senate when Biden became vice president. By 2014, Kaufman, who’d retired from the Senate, had gained valuable insight into the geopolitical dynamics impacting Ukraine, and had just returned from a VIP “pre-election assessment mission” to the country with a group whose director was former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
Kaufman laid out his insights in a talk to the Ukraine Crisis Media Center, and Mackler promptly emailed a video of the talk to Hunter, who then summarized the key points into 22-point email to his Burisma partner, Devon Archer – who, as it happens, is scheduled to testify on Monday before a Congressional committee investigating Biden family corruption.
“Ted gives recs” – recommendations – “around 12-minute mark,” Mackler’s email advised, and the next day, Hunter sent Archer the memo with a style and depth of apparent understanding that were strikingly unrepresentative of his usual correspondence. So unusual was the memo, in fact, that it has been called “incredibly suspicious” by at least one congressional investigator, given that it apparently contained high level intelligence about the situation on the ground in Ukraine.
Biden succeeded in convincing Burisma of his value; he and Archer were eventually enriched to the tune of $4 million. The Bidens’ ultimately received as much as $17 million in windfalls from foreign entities including Burisma, according to an IRS whistleblower. And Peter Schweizer has reported that the Bidens’ received some $31 million linked to the highest levels of Chinese intelligence.
The timing of Mackler’s Spring 2014 email and his subsequent path through the revolving door of Biden world is worth examining. Mackler had long been a key member of the Bidens’ most intimate political family, serving as Sen. Joe Biden’s Deputy Chief of staff, and campaign manager for Joe’s now-deceased son, Beau Biden, in the latter’s successful bid for Delaware Attorney General.
Five months after he sent the Ukraine email to Hunter, Mackler’s LinkedIn shows he became Deputy Counsel to Vice President Biden, moving into an office at the White House. This means that Mackler was giving Joe Biden legal advice as Hunter was collecting $83,333 per month—$1 million per year—from Burisma.
And Mackler’s next job after leaving the White House in 2016? He was hired as a prosecutor in office of U.S. Attorney in Wilmington, Delaware – the office that has been investigating Hunter Biden’s alleged crimes since 2018. Though it’s not known what role Mackler may have played in shaping Hunter’s sweetheart plea deal set aside by Judge Maryellen Noreika last week, it is known that he didn’t leave the Delaware prosecutor’s office until May 2019.
Judge Noreika forced the DOJ prosecutors and Hunter’s defense team back to the negotiating table. As of now, Hunter has pled not guilty to the tax charges and Mackler has not returned our request for comment on the unusual arrangement.
Mackler left the Vice President’s office in August 2016 and immediately began working for the US Attorney’s Office in Delaware. It was here that Mackler would work on the investigation into Hunter’s Burisma tax avoidance, among other apparent crimes. Mackler left David Weiss’s office in May 2019—years before Hunter agreed to plead guilty to multiple felonies in June 2023 in exchange for barely a slap on the wrist—no jail time.
That plea deal was reversed this past week when Judge Noreika threw out the sweetheart deal and forced Weiss’s office and Hunter’s defense team back to the negotiating table. As of now, Hunter has pled not guilty to the tax charges and Mackler has not returned our request for comment on the unusual arrangement.
Seamus Bruner is the Director of Research at the Government Accountability Institute and the author of Compromised: How Money & Politics Drive FBI Corruption and Fallout: Nuclear Bribes, Russia Spies, and D.C. Lies. Follow @seamusbruner.
