EDWARDSVILLE – Hunter Biden’s restless search for gain brought him through Madison County, in name if not in person.
For now, the nation is fixed on his recovered laptop and whether father Joe Biden will answer questions about potentially incriminating emails before the looming election. But from 2012 to 2014, Hunter listed himself as a manager of Eudora Global, an investment firm that lawyer Jeffrey Cooper set up in Edwardsville.
Cooper and Biden met through their wives, former high school classmates Francesca Moroney Cooper and Kathleen Buhle Biden.
Hunter Biden’s name stopped appearing in Eudora Global’s annual reports around the time Kathleen kicked him out of their home.
Jeffrey Cooper first connected his name to the family of Vice President Joe Biden on public record in 2005, not through Hunter but through Joe’s late son Beau.
The asbestos firm that Cooper and John Simmons led, Simmons Cooper, began filing suits in Delaware in association with Beau’s firm. At the time, Joe Biden served as U.S. Senator in Delaware.
Biden, in his position on the Senate judiciary committee, blocked reform of asbestos litigation.
In 2008, the Los Angeles Times reported that Simmons Cooper employees had donated about $200,000 to Joe Biden’s campaigns since 2001.
Simmons Cooper, contributors to many local, state and national Democratic politicians, also invested in the Delaware governor's race in 2008, supporting Democrat Jack Markell who went on to win two terms.
Cooper left the Simmons firm around that time, to invest in businesses of his own that included an unsuccessful bid for a Major League Soccer franchise in Collinsville.
He created Eudora Global as a limited liability company in 2008, for transaction of any lawful business for which such a company might be organized.
He identified himself and David Stanko as managers.
News sources have identified Hunter Biden as Eudora Global’s founder, but his name didn’t appear on the articles of incorporation.
Nor did it appear on the only notice of exempt offering that Eudora Global filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, in 2011.
Cooper listed the offering at $3 million, and the amount sold at $500,000.
In 2011, at the invitation of President Obama, he and Francesca dined at the White House with South Korean president Lee Myung-bak.
Hunter Biden appeared as a manager on Eudora Global’s annual reports for 2012, 2013, and 2014.
He didn’t appear on an annual report Cooper filed on July 7, 2015.
According to celebrity gossip sources, which constantly covered Hunter Biden before news sources did, Kathleen Biden kicked out Hunter in that month.
She filed for divorce in 2016, and got it in 2017.
Last May, the New York Post reported that she leans on Michelle Obama, “as she recovers from her divorce and the humiliating aftermath.”
(Editor's note: The substance of this article was first published in October 2019).