The troubled first son, Hunter Biden, and his business partners had close ties to Vice President Biden’s office according to new emails released by the National Archives. The messages show how Hunter Biden was busy leveraging his relationship with his father in order to bring together business associates and foreign business interests. 

The emails, obtained by America First Legal as part of its investigation of potential corruption involving Vice President Biden, show how the younger Mr. Biden was actively connecting foreign business leaders to American government officials. They cast some doubt on his father’s continued insistence that he had no knowledge of or participation in his son’s business dealings. 

At one point, a younger associate of Mr. Biden, Eric Schwerin, contacted the vice president’s office to get a colleague into a Department of State lunch with senior Chinese Communist Party officials. Other emails suggest that the younger Mr. Biden received confidential information about his father’s official trip to Africa in 2010. 

With regard to the state dinner for Communist Chinese officials, the first son and his colleague, Mr. Schwerin, were involved in filling chairs with their business associates, academics with whom they were close, and prominent Democratic Party officials. 

The emails related to this event — labeled with the subject line “China Lunch” — show that the first son was, in fact, involved with official government planning and foreign business entities even as the president continues to deny his son was part of any such activity. 

A separate email chain shows that the first son reached out to his father’s then-deputy chief of staff, Alan Hoffman, on June 3, 2010, asking to call him to “talk about Africa.”

“Always available for you,” Mr. Hoffman responded.

“These records — which are only a small portion of the actual records that the National Archives possess — demonstrate for the American people, yet again, continued evidence of influence peddling and personal enrichment by the Biden family,” America First Legal’s vice president, Gene Hamilton, said in a statement. “The full extent has yet to be seen, but with each release, we are painting a fuller picture for the American people of the extent to which the Biden family business was intertwined with the official business of the United States.”

These disclosures come as House Republicans ramp up their investigation into the younger Mr. Biden and his family’s ties to foreign business entities. 

The House Oversight Committee recently disclosed that the Biden family has received millions of dollars as a result of the first son’s largesse in recent years.

The chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Congressman James Comer, says that over the course of three months in 2017, the Biden family collectively received more than $1 million in payments from a business associate of Hunter’s who worked with him in the Chinese energy market, Rob Walker. 

Of that money, Beau Biden’s widow, Hallie Biden, who dated Hunter after her husband’s death, received two payments totaling $35,000 from Mr. Walker’s limited liability companies that the GOP committee says were paid by a Chinese energy company, State Energy HK Limited. It is unclear what business services she provided to receive the money. Hallie Biden used to work as a school counselor, but now sits on the board of the Beau Biden Foundation. 

The Oversight Committee says Hallie Biden is “a new person of interest in the Biden Business Scheme.”

“The Oversight Committee is concerned about the national security implications resulting from President Biden’s family receiving millions of dollars from foreign nationals. We will continue to follow the money trail and facts,” the committee said in a statement.