What is Metabiota? Emails reveal Hunter Biden got millions for DoD contractor specializing in infectious diseases
The laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden has once again put the President's son in the middle of controversy. The latest claims, circulating since May 25, 2022, say Biden helped secure funding for bioweapons labs in Ukraine. The claims come straight from the Kremlin themselves, but cannot be dismissed as propaganda just yet. It appears that this bit of propaganda does appear to have some truth to it.
Amongst the many excuses Russian President Vladimir Putin has given, one he loves to repeat is the presence of deadly biolabs, justifying his invasion of Ukraine. The theory has been circulating online for a while and even made it to Tucker Carlon's program on Fox News. In fact, the claims have even led one American, John Mark Dougan, to leave his home in Moscow and travel to Ukraine, in a bid to expose the labs.
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The biolabs claim has now grown to encompass Hunter Biden after the Kremlin claimed he helped finance a research program via his investment firm Rosemont Seneca. The claims have been partially vindicated by The Daily Mail, which has access to data from the 'laptop from hell'. The Mail claimed it found emails showing that Biden did indeed fund one particular biolab, located a few hundred miles from the Russian border.
What is Metabiota?
The biolab in question is named Metabiota and is reportedly a contractor of the US Department of Defense. The Mail claimed Metabiota specializes "in research on pandemic-causing diseases that could be used as bioweapons." According to the company's website, it is a biotech firm that is headquartered in San Fransisco, California but has project sites in numerous cities globally, including Kyiv, Ukraine.
Federal government spending records show dozens of entries for Metabiota, dating as far back as 2010. Between 2014 and 2016, the government awarded $18.4 million for research and development in the area of Cooperative Threat Reduction. Details show that $307,091 of that amount was earmarked for "Ukraine research projects", so it does appear as if the US is involved in some capacity as Russia alleged. Amongst those expenses is a commission by the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency for a Biological Safety Level 3 laboratory in Odessa. Such labs are often used to study deadly pathogens and infectious diseases.
However, there's no real clarity on whether that is to develop bioweapons, as the Kremlin claims, or if it is to really study epidemics and cures, as the Metabiota website says it does. Whatever the reality, we probably may not know. However, things get really murky when Hunter Biden is thrown into the mix.
Biden's links to Metabiota
In 2014, Metabiota's Vice President Mary Guttieri emailed Biden and said the firm could "leverage our team, networks, and concepts to assert Ukraine's cultural and economic independence from Russia." Days later, Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi sent an email revealing Biden linked the Ukrainian gas company to Metabiota. "Please find few initial points to be discussed for the purposes of analyzing the potential of this as you called, 'Science Ukraine' project'," Pozharskyi wrote.
Reportedly, Biden's links go back even further. Metabiota was reportedly one of the many companies Biden's firm - Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners (RSTP)- invested in. Emails show that Metabiota's medical data monitoring tool was of great interest, so much so that RSTP invested $500,000 in the business. RSTP then raised millions more via other investment giants, such as Goldman Sachs. However, there's no mention of RSTP on Metabiota's website, while other partners and investors are listed.
At the time, Joe Biden was the Vice President of the US, so naturally, questions have also been raised about how much he knew of his son's activities. Former senior CIA officer Sam Faddis told The Mail, "It's an obvious Russian propaganda attempt to take advantage of this. But it doesn't change the fact that there does seem to be something that needs to be explored here."
It's not unusual for governments to order the study of deadly pathogens, especially after major outbreaks like Ebola have occurred in the past with no cures. However, the odd links to Hunter Biden, Burisma, and the US DoD certainly seem to raise enough suspicion, without adequate answers. So certainly, it makes for attractive propaganda from Russia's perspective.