OAN’s Brooke Mallory
5:22 PM – Monday, September 11, 2023
While she worked in the Treasury Department during the Obama-Biden Administration, President Biden’s niece, Casey Owens, reportedly sent information on China Investment Corporation (CIC), China’s largest sovereign wealth fund, to Hunter Biden and the other president of his firm through email.
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When Owens spoke with Hunter and his longtime business partner, Eric Schwerin, about the CIC, a state-owned organization that oversees a portion of the Chinese government’s foreign exchange reserves, she was working as a special assistant for the United States-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue at the Treasury Department.
At the time, Schwerin was president of Hunter’s now-defunct Rosemont Seneca Advisors, which was wooing the CIC for new investments.
Several weeks prior, on April 12th, 2010, Owens sent Hunter and Schwerin an email with the itinerary of a CIC investment conference.
“FYI on recent CIC investment conference at a resort in Sanya, on Hainan Island, over the weekend of March 27-28,” Owens wrote.
According to the Republican Senate report published in September 2020, a Thornton Group press release dated that same day, April 12th, stated that the company’s chairman, James Bulger, and Hunter visited Beijing just three days prior and met with CIC Chief Investment Officer Gao Xiqing, among others.
A piece on Owens, written by the Tower Hill Bulletin and published months later, stated that she and her team visited Beijing in May 2010 as part of a group led by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
The post included a picture of Owens getting a “small jade vase as a birthday gift” from Zhu Guangyao, China’s vice minister of finance at the time. The Chinese Communist Party’s decisions and policies on public finance are to be implemented, according to the website of the Ministry of Finance.
According to the story in the Bulletin, Zhu and Owens’ team “worked very closely during the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue.”
A few weeks after arriving back in Beijing, Owens sent Schwerin an email with the subject line “China’s CIC May Post Record Year for 2009 as Markets Recover,” which Schwerin sent on July 23, 2010, to Hunter.
On August 4, 2010, Schwerin introduced Owens to Jack Casey through email after he claimed to have spoken with Casey earlier that day about “GSEs and China. Casey is the vice chairman of Meridian Investments.
“Jack,” Schwerin wrote. “Good seeing you at lunch today. Per our conversation regarding GSEs and China, I wanted to put you in touch with Hunter’s cousin, Casey Owens, who is at the Treasury Department and works on the Strategic Economic Dialogue. I have cc:ed Casey on this email. Feel free to reach out to her directly, she’s expecting to hear from you.”
“Jack, Happy to speak at your convenience,” Owens responded after. “Best, Casey.”
The email was forwarded later on to Hunter as well, according to transcripts acquired by Fox News.
An insider source with knowledge of Rosemont Seneca’s interest in CIC claimed that Owens was most likely providing information to the firm to boost their chances of persuading CIC to invest in their fund customers. However, the source said that they were unaware of any agreements that the business may have had with CIC.
On March 8, 2011, Schwerin emailed Hunter and Rosemont Seneca co-founder Devon Archer a list of the top state-owned sovereign wealth funds as of the time, as well as their rankings, according to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute (SWFI).
“Let’s discuss today what else we can be doing to connect with these groups,” Archer responded, adding that Rosemont Seneca was “already working” with several funds on the list.
Archer also added that he was planning a related meeting in April with the CIC.
“CIC- scheduling meeting for April 21st,” Archer said.
Before she departed the Treasury on May 10, 2011, Owens sent an email to auks@att.blackberry.net with the subject line “Uncle Joe” in which she discussed the vice president’s statements from the opening session of the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue the day before.
“Uncle Joe,” Owens wrote. “Just got home from work and couldn’t wait to send you an email. Today was truly a memorable day for me. I keep thinking about Mommom. Can you imagine her seeing us huddled up back stage together? She would have loved it. It chokes me up. I have so much to learn! Sitting back there with you was very, very humbling. I was just blown away. You ALWAYS make time to talk to me. Always. But today was really incredible. I still can’t believe you took the time to discuss the issues with me.”
“And your remarks,” she continued. “That was really something else, Uncle Joe. What a way to exit the Treasury. I’m almost embarrassed by how deeply today has impacted me. I’m simply happy to be close to you, and I just wanted to say thank you for including me. Love Casey.”
Later, the “auks” email account forwarded Owens’ email to Hunter, Beau Biden, and Owens’ mother Valerie Biden Owens.
The “auks” account can also be viewed in several email exchanges on Hunter’s laptop, and many believe that auks is another alias used by the then-vice president. The mascot of Archmere Academy, where Biden and his son finished high school, is an “Auks”.
According to her LinkedIn page, Owens, who now goes by Castello, departed the Treasury in July 2011.
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